The Fight For Rights
by almalamaemperorkusko
Summary: After ten years of silence in a cupboard with her only friends, the spiders, one of them talks to Annabelle Potter! As an arachnatongue - a witch who can understand spider language - Annabelle befriends and allies with spiders around the world as she goes out into it, and together they start an unstoppable change: The fight for the sentient rights of all sapient nonhuman species!
1. A Mutually Beneficial Relationship

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

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Ten year old Annabelle Potter was alone in her cupboard with her only friends when it happened: they talked to her! The spiders.

Well, one of them did.

*How was your latest hunt?*

"Who said that?" Annabelle whispered into the darkness. She wasn't scared. She was _glad_ to have someone or something to talk to in here, really. Someone who sounded nice. It was a deep, kind, girl's voice.

*I did.* The voice came again, but this time it was louder. It was somewhere on the floor! Annabelle moved her feet around carefully, trying not to kick whoever it was, but also trying to _find them_. She didn't feel anything, though, and that left her confused more than anything else.

"Are you a ghost?" Annabelle asked.

*What's a ghost?* Now the voice was confused too. Then it went on with, *I'm a spider. A steatoda grossa, by your human classifications - if I'm remembering the book correctly, that is. Anyway, my name's Ycu.*

"Yoo-coo?" Annabelle pronounced with a smile. "I'm Annabelle. You read my book about...your people?" It was the only gift her aunt and uncle had given her in her entire life, an encyclopedia picture book about spiders, after they had noticed her interest in them. She frowned and kicked her feet on the dusty floor. "How did you learn english? And how come you've never talked to me before? And how come you never-"

*Quiet!* Ycu's voice was sharp, like a loud _clack_ , and it made Annabelle freeze where she sat. *And stop moving! You'll scare away all my food - or ruin my web, which I've worked hard on repairing for the past hour now, after you damaged it the last time!*

"I'm sorry!" said Annabelle quickly - and _quietly_ , like Ycu asked her to be. "Sorry. But can you please answer me?"

*I've been alive for three years - I've had time to learn your language. I never spoke to you before tonight because I know how most of your people react to mine; you try to immediately kill us. Can you blame me, really, for not wanting to risk talking to you before now? But I'm risking it now because I've sensed for a long time that you're a very special kind of human. A human with the ability to speak to us spiders, and to hear what we speak back to you.*

"Oh." Annabelle was quiet for a long time, trying to wrap her head around it all. "So, all spiders are as smart as you, and all of you can talk, but it's just that most humans can't _hear you talk_? And can't talk to you?"

*That's right.*

"But...if you're all as smart as humans, and you can all talk, and you can all learn to talk english, how come you don't have like...cities and stuff? And governments? I mean, why are you all still running around, hiding in corners, and- and- I don't get it. You just don't...seem like you're _acting_ very smart."

*Maybe we're just not acting how you _think_ smart beings would act,* countered Ycu, her deep voice going deeper and a bit dangerous. *You humans act how you act, and we spiders act how _we_ act. And _we_ _like_ how we act! We're perfectly fine with living in corners, in shadows, traveling when we can or if we want to. We live how we live not because we're simple or stupid, but because _we like living this way_! It in no way means we're stupider than you, or _wrong_ for not acting like you do! We don't _need_ governments, we don't _need_ cities, we don't **_need_** the things that you do! You arrogant creatures! Your way is not the best way, not the _only_ way to live, and it doesn't give you the right to murder us at your whim - as you do!*

"I'm sorry! I get it, I'm sorry, I get it!"

There was silence in the cupboard again. Annabelle hated it, she didn't want it to be this way again, not when she finally had someone to talk to! It was like being given water after being stuck in a desert, only to have that water taken away from her a minute later!

*You're young,* Ycu spoke, in a thoughtful tone. A _kind_ tone again. *I'm sorry to be so rude toward you. Of course you wouldn't know any better. But maybe...you're young enough to learn?*

"To learn what?"

*To learn that just because you can't hear us, doesn't mean we aren't as intelligent and as alive as you are,* Ycu replied. *If you respect us, if you talk to us, if you leave us alone when we want to be left alone, and if you don't try to murder any of us, then we will give you the same treatment in return. And maybe, if you do this for us, and if we do the same for you in turn, maybe we can have something together.*

"What do you mean?"

*A mutually beneficial relationship,* said Ycu patiently - and still so kindly. *Maybe we will help you with things you might need help with, and maybe you'll start to help us with the things we might need help with.*

"That sounds okay to me," said Annabelle, her smile growing again. She was so relieved, so _glad_ , so _happy_! It sounded like having friends, almost. And she'd never had friends before! But if she could have them _now_...

*Then we'll see where this goes,* said Ycu. She paused. *Your hunt? How was it?*

Annabelle shook her head, even though she knew a spider probably didn't know what it meant and couldn't see her anyway. "I wasn't...hunting anything. I was doing...work. Like...I guess how you spin your webs and stuff all the time? I had to do something like that, but for humans."

*Well, I hope no one damages your work.*

"Me too," Annabelle muttered, thinking of Dudley and Piers and his gang; they'd sometimes do just that, just to get her in trouble with her aunt and uncle. Thankfully, this time, they hadn't been around to see her working out there. "I'm sorry I damaged your web. Probably more than once, too, these past few years. You were right about me, about us. I never thought you were...smart and stuff. Like you had feelings and thoughts."

*You're young,* Ycu repeated her earlier words. *I forgive you. Annabelle, the next time you leave your home for your work, would you take me with you? I'd like to see what you do out there.*

"My home? You mean this cupboard?" Annabelle frowned. "It's not really my home. It's...like a trap. Do you...do you know how some people put _your_ people in jars or cups or aquariums or whatever? Zoos? To be looked and poked and stuff?"

*Yes,* Ycu answered slowly, that dangerous note coming back to her deep voice. *I know all about your "zoos."*

"Right, well, this cupboard is kind of my zoo," Annabelle went on quickly. "I'm stuck in here. I'm getting fed and poked at, but I'm stuck in here most of the time."

*When you're let out, why don't you run?* Ycu questioned. *My people do it all the time, when they get the chance.*

"I...I've never thought about it?" Annabelle stammered out. She really never had. But now that Ycu had brought it up to her...no! No, no. "Too many problems! If I ran away, I'd just be worse off. I couldn't get food, humans don't really hunt for food like that. And I'd be in danger from the cold, and from random people who might hurt me, and if my aunt and uncle got the police to bring me back- and- no! I just couldn't run away like that! It'd be _worse_ than just staying here!"

*Nothing is worse than staying trapped!* Ycu said sharply. *That's why my kind have that immediate sense to _run_ , to _escape_! Because there's _nothing worse_! I don't know why you don't have that same sense, but you _must_ run the next time you have the chance!*

"NO!" Annabelle cried, stamping a foot flat on the floor. "I'm not running away, I can't, I won't! Just _no_ , all right? Just- shut up! You don't know what will happen to me if I try that!"

The cupboard was completely silent again. And it stayed that way for hours into the night, until Annabelle fell asleep, shivering and in tears.


	2. The Adventure Begins

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!** _ **  
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 _ **August 5, 1998**_

Newly eighteen years old, Annabelle strode through the sands of the Sahara Desert, heedless of heat and unhindered by the sand itself, a magically enchanted sunroof floating along over her head, and a circulation of cool air running through her cloak and swirling around her body.

She came to a halt in front of a line of three dozen goblins, all cloaked and all with swords sheathed. "With every respect," she began calmly, patiently - as Ycu had taught her to be so long ago. "I'm here to speak with Nyllia on her very own invitation. You aren't, and so your presence here won't be as welcomed by her as mine. I'd suggest you leave _her_ territory before she gets here and _makes you_."

"Drop your pretense, human," one goblin barked out at her. "You know we're here, not for _her_ , but _to stop you from getting to her_!"

"Right," Annabelle acknowledged - and obliged - with a simple nod. "Why are you here to stop me, then? Why've you guys been following me all around the world? You attacked me back in South America, in my own hotel room, for...what reason?"

"The goblin nation won't stand by and let some human amass a personal army of highly dangerous creatures," another goblin spoke, a snarl in her tone. "They may be stupid enough to be brainwashed by you, taken into your cause, but _we_ aren't going to fall for it! And we won't let you use them for your own ends! You humans, you'll throw away their lives like nothing, just to suit you! _No_!"

"Okay," Annabelle said slowly, looking down at her feet, and noting the subtly shifting sands there before raising her eyes to the goblins again. "Well, you won't be persuaded out of your opinions on me and my 'agenda,' so I'm not even going to try. No denying, no lying, no convincing you. So, that means the move is yours. What're you going to do? Kill me? Kidnap me? What's it going to be?"

In response, several of the goblins drew their swords. A few others just raised their hands and pointed their fingers at her - they were preparing to use wandless magic of their own kind's variety.

*Nyllia,* Annabelle sighed, shaking her head and dropping it to her chest. The sand shifted again, much more visibly this time. *I hate to ask something of you when we've only sort of just met, but I'm about to be murdered by some goblins just to prevent me from meeting with you, and I don't think that I can-*

BOOM!

Nyllia burst out of the ground, fifty feet tall and twice that wide, from right under Annabelle's feet, carrying her and the goblins very, very high up on her armored, dusty backside. Annabelle applied magic from out of her palms to stick herself to Nyllia's armor, as all around her Nyllia used her arachnid magic to create and control several magical tendrils of sand. Nyllia's magical sand tendrils twisted and weaved in the air, and she even conjured up huge waves of sand. They washed over Annabelle, but none of it was burning, none of it was hurting - it was just passing over and around her. The goblins were not so lucky; Nyllia directed six of her sand tentacles to wrap around two goblins and turn to glass around their waists, and she then hurled them out across the sand like a person throwing a baseball as hard and fast as they could. Another of Nyllia's magical sand waves washed over four other goblins, leaving them screaming and crisping over in a way that had Annabelle turning away and puking. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the help of awesome spider magic - of course she did! - but that was just...extreme.

Nyllia suddenly _heaved_ , like a bucking bull, and four goblins were thrown off to fall a very, _very_ long way. She lurched to one side, swung her whole body around to the right, and let out a screech of pain as some goblins near her abdomen got their bearings and started slashing right though her armor like it wasn't even there, leaving huge gashes and causing green blood to come spurting up out.

Annabelle unstuck one hand and thrust it out at the distant goblins. Her magic slammed into them, transfigured them into rabbits that then slid right off Nyllia's body - the swords followed after, glistening in the hot sun's light. She drew her wand out of her cloak's folds and jabbed it into the face of a goblin who had taken a hazardous leap right for her. Her spell was nonverbal, and the first one she could think of: Reducto. The goblin turned to dust even as they fell on top of her, and the dust mixed in with all the sand. At the same time, she felt the knife they'd been holding stab right into her stomach to the hilt. She gasped, feeling more surprised than actually _hurt_ (but she was sure she'd feel that later, after the adrenaline and insanity of the situation was all gone!), and immediately spun her wand toward the injury and began chanting out a healing spell.

The spell was interrupted by three goblins stumbling their way toward her, ducking and weaving around the tendrils of sand that tried to snatch them up! Two of them lunged at her with swords swinging, while the third stayed back and lashed out at her with some kind of magical fire whip that crackled scarlet. Annabelle rolled left with one of Nyllia's latest throes, stuck her hand against the curved side of her body and hung there between two of her giant legs. The goblins came over to the edge and hurled their swords down at her. She closed her eyes and disapparated to the ground. Immediately she was set upon by the surviving goblins down in the sand with her.

Magical blue rope materialized around her neck and squeezed tight, and two goblins tackled her. High above them Nyllia still stamped and screeched, her legs making miniature earthquakes every time they came stomping down. Annabelle lashed out at the goblins holding her down, slamming her knees into them wildly and trying to throw them off the normal way. Her magic acted on its own, sending out a burning wave that picked them up and carried them several feet. She turned her wand on the blue rope strangling her, cutting her skin open and making her bleed in spurts, and sent a nullification spell into it. It was enough to make the rope fade and vanish into particles, giving her relief. She focused on a healing charm, while at the same time keeping her eyes on the goblins who were getting their bearings again, and getting ready to come at her again.

She had to cut her healing spell short a second time to throw up a shield of sand-turned-to-glass, ten feet thick, to deflect the goblins leaping at her, and then she delayed her own healing further by whirling on the spot and enveloping herself in a glass cylinder that was an extension of the wall. It wrapped around her protectively, sealed at the top, and she was able to take ten long seconds to finish healing her neck up. She had started on the knife wound in her stomach when the goblins reverted her glass cylinder into useless sand. She flicked her wand at them and sent a Killing Curse at the nearest. It connected, and the goblin just dropped dead on her face. The other two goblins hurled magic at her with vicious expressions, and she used a levitation spell to send them shooting up twenty, fifty, a hundred feet into the air - well above even Nyllia - to give herself a bit more time to complete her healing. She'd half healed her guts when seven goblins came raining down from atop Nyllia to surround her; Nyllia got to them before Annabelle, directing some of her sand tentacles, now tipped with glass spikes, to impale the goblins, which then exploded into a dozen more spikes inside their bodies outward.

Annabelle focused on the remaining damages left in her, but they refused to go away. Why wasn't it-

 _Oh, right, Goblin metal,_ she realized. _Takes in that which strengthens it. Probably poisoned or cursed._ Which meant that nothing Annabelle did right now was going to fix things all the way. _Great!_

Annabelle slashed her wand at the goblins who had come back down from her levitation treatment, striking them both with Blasting Curses a second apart. The curses struck home, and tore the goblins apart. They were nothing but scattered limbs and bits and pieces of flesh and bone and organs. She turned this way and that, searching for new threats on the ground, but found none. She was preparing to apparate up atop Nyllia when the giant arachnid suddenly rolled over. She sprung herself up to one side with a massive explosion of magic, and rolled completely over! When she righted herself, there were dozens of splattered, messy scarlet spots all over the landscape. The goblins were all dead now, and the desert was silent again.

Annabelle had fallen flat on her butt from the rumbling earthquake Nyllia had just made with her roll; she swiped her hand over her face, and grinned up at Nyllia from the sand. *Thank you for saving my life. Can I do anything to help your injuries?*

*You are most welcome, Mrs. Potter, and you have my gratitude in return - but my magical power is enough that I can tend to my own wounds.*

*Of course. And, you can call me Annabelle if you'd like.*

*You've traveled far and through great and many obstacles to keep to your invitation, it seems,* Nyllia replied, a certain kind of warmth and _humor_ lacing her voice. *I admire that kind of determination in a female. And your ferocity in defending me as much as yourself is so very much appreciated, as well - as is the concern for my welfare. I must say, for a human you seem to be quite desirable.*

Annabelle blinked up at Nyllia. Was she being hit on by a giant, sapient, magical arachnid? *I- Nyllia, I'm flattered to have the...interest of the greatest hunter on this continent - but I don't recall accepting an invitation of _that_ when I...accepted your invitation.*

*So you did not,* Nyllia responded, not sounding disappointed or upset in the least.

*So I didn't,* Annabelle agreed. She hesitated. *But...invite me back here a second time, and I might be willing to make it a more pleasure-oriented visit.*

*Visit rarely, and you will be more loved,* said Nyllia - it sounded like a quote to Annabelle.

Suddenly, several kilometers of desert dropped. Like a natural elevator, the section of land fell down a rocky shaft. The speeds must have been hundreds per hour, and the depth miles upon miles, but Annabelle was unaffected. She did her best to keep her calm as she fixed her gaze to Nyllia still, who didn't look affected by the high speed falling either.

*You live by a proverb of this land: Believe what you see and lay aside what you hear,* spoke Nyllia, as they continued to fall, fall, fall! *I had heard before now, of you and your actions across the planet. In the name of all of us, I have heard what you have done. But now I have seen it. I have seen you, and I believe what I see before me now. And so, Annabelle Potter, I show you what none have lived to see but my own kind: our home.*

The land-elevator came to an almost instant stop. It shot down out of the shaft and plunged into the open air of a massive rocky domed place, and then it stopped in midair. It hovered, and Annabelle ran to the edge of the platform to take in everything around her. If the section of land she rode in on was huge for what it was, the dome size was downright impossible for what _it_ _was_ \- magic, of course. The dome's expanse stretched for miles upon miles, until she could barely see the curved edge in the distance! The ground was so far below her that what Annabelle was _certain_ had to be house-sized spiders (of Nyllia's type) looked so small they could fit in her palm!

Crisscrossing every which way around the dome were hanging arches from the ceiling, and arches that curved up from the ground! There were streaming sands like sideways waterfalls coming off the walls at sharp angles to meet the ground, and there were strange swirling whirlpools of sand everywhere, every few dozen feet, in different sizes and shifting at different speeds. And disconnected from the arches and the overhangs and even the sideways sand waterfalls, were great platforms of natural sand and rock that drifted around at different heights, like the one Annabelle and Nyllia were on - but some were actually different, with miniature domes of hard rock, and little openings in these domes that showed Annabelle that inside were several spiders doing who knew what!

And, last to catch Annabelle's attention, there were hundreds of tunnel entrances all over the dome, like spots, whose openings expanded and contracted for any sized spider to pass, as a constant stream of them disappeared in and out of them. The tunnel mouths were near the ground, they were all along the curve of the dome, and they went all the way to the very top, to the ceiling and its highest point. There were hundreds of spiders alone crawling on the walls and ceiling just to reach these tunnels that went who knew where.

*Oh my god, it's beautiful,* Annabelle breathed.

*Thank you,* Nyllia took the compliment easily.

Their platform shot down to the ground, finishing the journey, and melted into the rest of the rock and sand like it was always a part of it. The closest several hundred spiders, from ones as small as golden retrievers to ones as big as houses, all gathered around Nyllia and Annabelle, clicking their mandibles and stamping their legs, all their many eyes on them with an intensity and a curiosity that had Annabelle blushing on the spot as she finally stood up again.

*Tribedaughters and tribesons,* Nyllia began addressing them all, her voice magically carrying across the entirety of the vast underground dome. *This human is Annabelle Potter! She has kept her word, she has come to us, and she has risked her very life and limb to do so! Members of the Goblin Nation just attempted to end her life in order to prevent her from speaking with us, and from giving us the aid that only she can! She is as true a hunter as any of us, and I gave my personal aid to her just as I would to any of you who needed it! Know this: I take Annabelle, human hunter, ally of our kind, and ally to all nonhumans, into this tribe!*

*You would do that for me, right away?* Annabelle questioned, blunt, maybe inappropriately in front of a human audience to their leader...but not to arachnids. *Just like that.*

*Just like that, you've proven yourself to me,* said Nyllia with no hesitation. *Proven yourself worthy of the tribe.*

*Of course.* Of course, arachnids were always so...practical.

 _ **August 4, 1991**_

*We're under attack! Annabelle, _please_ run this time, or I'll-*

*It's just the letters again,* Annabelle interrupted, weary as her relatives started freaking out over said letters - again. They were _magic_ letters; the first one she'd gotten ahold of and read had told her so. She was a mage - a witch, to be more specific. Which might explain how she could hear spiders. But it didn't explain how Ycu could talk to _her_ \- unless Ycu was magic. Unless every spider everywhere was magical, and no one knew. That made sense to both of them. Annabelle brought her wrist up to her face, like she was checking a watch, and frowned at Ycu, who was perched there. *Were you about to say you'd bite me?*

*If it would have gotten you moving - yes,* said Ycu, not hesitating at all to say such a thing. In the past month that Annabelle had known her, she'd come to know that was how Ycu was, and also, how _all spiders_ seemed to be. Emotions didn't really bother them, or cloud their judgement or anything like that. They were _there_ , they _had_ emotions, yes, but those emotions were fleeting and shallow, bubbling up and then dying down in a matter of seconds. They never _lasted_ , not really like human emotions often did. They weren't capable of getting angry and _staying angry_ for hours, or days - the same was true for grieving, sadness, and anything else. A spider wasn't physically capable of falling into a depression, for example. Spiders were...practical. *I know you don't have the instinct of _run for your life_ , but I intend to give it to you. And if that means biting you whenever you _need to run_ in order to get you moving, then I will. And you'll thank me later, when I say _bite_ and you start running without even thinking about it.*

*I don't think that's how any of that works,* Annabelle said, shaking her head and lowering her arm.

*You're young, what do you know about how anything works at all?* Ycu teased.

*You use that against me too much,* complained Annabelle, entirely serious. *I'm _young_ , but I'm not _stupid_ \- and I'm _learning_.*

*I don't have too many years left to teach you,* Ycu said. *I wonder if you can learn faster.*

*I can work harder! I can learn faster!* Annabelle said quickly, panic and horror bursting inside her at the thought of Ycu being taken away from her so soon! Too soon! How could she be? How could that- why- no! *Ycu, you can't- I mean we just met! Now you tell me you aren't going to be around after just a few years?! How many?*

*Two or three,* Ycu responded, her voice turning gentle. *I'm sorry, but I can't help my lifespan. But if you want a longer lasting "friend" after I die, you can go find some other kinds of spiders - I've read that some of them can live up to thirty years.*

*I don't _want_ new friends, I want _you_! Forever, always! Ycu-*

*I can't help it,* Ycu repeated, cutting her off. *That's all there is to it, Annabelle. You can't help it, either. Find a longer-lived spider to partner up with after I die, that's all you can do.*


	3. A Vacation At Home

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

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 _ **August 5, 1998 - Monotel Motel, Nouakchott (Capital City)**_

As soon as Annabelle was back in her hotel room, she collapsed onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling for several long minutes.

The door to her room opened, and Daphne Greengrass (Annabelle's best friend since childhood, and current traveling partner for the sake of the traveling, rather than any vested interest in nonhuman rights affairs, as was Annabelle's motivation) stalked in like she owned it. She was always like that, and Annabelle had done her best to put up with it the past seven years. But for her to be how she was on a day like today...

Annabelle sat up and looked into her best friend's eyes as the latter strode right over to the bed with a _purpose_. "Daphne, I have had a really long, really exhausting day, so could you please try to be quiet when you-"

Daphne crawled on top of Annabelle, her arms down on either side of her head, and dipped down and kissed her roughly on the lips. It was hard, it was strong, and it wasn't - _good_. There wasn't anything _positive_ in the kiss, save the tingling pleasures of the body itself. But beyond that, there was nothing _wanted_ about it. Annabelle brought her arms up between them and pushed Daphne off - or, tried to. Daphne grabbed her wrists and slammed them back against the headboard, and just went back to kissing her in that ugly, powerful way she was.

That was when Annabelle's brain finally kicked in, and registered just what was being done to her.

" _Get the fuck off, get the fuck off_!" Annabelle yelled out, bringing her knee up into Daphne's stomach - again and again. She slammed her forehead into Daphne's face as the latter woman growled at her and went in for another kiss. A loud _crack_ split the room, and blood came spilling down onto Annabelle's neck and chest from out of Daphne's broken nose. Daphne finally let go, sitting up on her and darting her hands over her face. Annabelle twisted to her left and grabbed her wand off her nightstand, and she used a Banishing Spell to send Daphne flying back across the room.

Daphne's hand shot down to her hip, and she drew her own wand out of her jeans and pointed it at Annabelle. The flash of green light that lit up the room in the next moment had Annabelle rolling sideways out of bed without even thinking about it. She fell behind the bed and cast a shield charm around herself, and used a second Banishing spell to slide herself out from behind her cover. She hurled a Killing Curse of her own as she was still sliding; her feet hit the wall a moment later. She deflected another Killing Curse from Daphne by jerking her wand at the dresser to slide it in front of her for even more cover - it didn't last long, though. The dresser exploded, and large, pointy pieces of wood flew back to slice and splinter and even stab Annabelle all over. She jumped to her feet, with a snarl through gritted teeth that betrayed the agony she was feeling in several places, and went into a proper combat stance.

She flicked her wand, feinting a deadly curse, but instead she subtly transfigured the painting on the wall behind Daphne into a cheetah. She saw the confusion on her best friend's- _her rapist's face_. Daphne was over it in the next instant, throwing a Blasting Curse at her shield. It exploded on contact, knocking Annabelle back into the wall, and blowing out the walls to the adjacent hotel rooms. Annabelle wasn't about to complain. She took advantage of the extra space and apparated a few feet into the room on her left, then she quickly transfigured the beds and dressers in both the adjacent rooms into four ravenous tigers.

Daphne struck two lunging tigers with Cutting Curses strong enough to slice off their heads - but she didn't notice the fourth or fifth coming up from behind her, and they took her the floor and went at her. One went for the throat, and the other started tearing at her exposed stomach. She gave a panicked swish of her wand that blew the tiger that was eating her stomach in half, its guts and blood spilling all over her, and exploded the head off the one trying for her throat.

Annabelle threw a Killing Curse at Daphne again, and a second later magically commanded the waiting cheetah to make its move. Daphne levitated the body of a dead tiger into the path of the Killing Curse, saving her from that - but not from the cheetah. It was on Daphne faster than even Annabelle could have imagined, slapping with its paws and snapping its jaws at her. Daphne screamed as her face was mutilated, but another Blasting Curse of hers did away with the threat of the cheetah.

That was fine with Annabelle: she hadn't intended to actually kill Daphne - just buy herself enough time to get away. More specifically, to focus on apparating. She managed to do it, and she was gone from the room and reappearing on the roof of the hotel.

[Norberta!] she shouted in draketongue. Draketongue was a sister language to parseltongue - the primary, innate language gifted to her by Voldemort when she had been a baby - which she had _also_ inherited from the madman; snakes and dragons were both lizards, after all, and so the languages had come to Annabelle as part of a pair. Annabelle limped her way over to the huge, spiked, golden-scaled dragon curled up in the middle of the roof. [Norberta, wake up! We have to go!]

Norberta's head raised, and her glowing amber eyes opened. She slapped her tail against the roof, her spikes sinking into it. Then she leapt to her feet and lumbered over to meet Annabelle. She dipped her neck and settled on her fore legs, letting Annabelle climb up and swing herself around quickly and easily. Annabelle grabbed hold of the meter long spike in front of her, just behind Norberta's long neck. [Go, please!] Annabelle urged. Norberta did; she leapt off the building and gave her wings a mighty flap, then another, and then another, and then she was gaining height, and then speed.

They soared over the city, and out into the vast, empty desert.

[Who tried to kill you this time?] asked Norberta.

After they had gotten a few hundred miles into the empty desert plains, Annabelle had decided they would stop and sleep the rest of the night away. She had conjured up a tent and blankets for herself, cast protective and hiding spells around the area, and had finished it all off by conjuring up a burning bonfire in the center of their little camp to keep away the desert freezing temperatures.

Annabelle was laying on her side at the entrance to the tent, propped up on an elbow so she could talk with Norberta, who was laying casually in the sand. But although her posture was lazy, as dragon posture usually was, Annabelle knew that it was an act. She knew Norberta's glistening amber eyes were actually taking stock of their surroundings, keeping herself alert for any more, or familiar, threats. And Annabelle loved Norberta for that, right then.

"Daphne. Well, she didn't try to kill me - well, not at first, I mean." Annabelle shook her head, closed her eyes a moment and relished the warmth of the bonfire. "At first she just tried to...to rape me. But I hurt her, I got her off me, and then that was when she switched things up and tried to kill me."

[How exactly did she hurt you?] Norberta's tone was fierce and furious, but mixed in with all that ferociousness was heavy alarm and concern. [Do you need to be healed? I can fly you to a magical hospital, if you don't feel able to apparate. If you don't, I'm still going to fly you to the African Ministry to talk with their law enforcement officials in the morning.]

]She just kissed me a bit,] Annabelle said calmly, switching over from English back to dragontongue. The fingers of her left hand moved to caress the ring on her right hand. This ring was silver, pristine, and held an orange gemstone that soaked up the firelight and shined like a firefly. [I'm fine physically. She didn't even...touch me anywhere. And, okay, in the morning we can do that. But tonight, I just want us to...to stay right here. Like this. Together, and warm, and talking, and- and-]

[Okay,] Norberta said quietly. [We'll stay right here, Annabelle. Right here.]

[Good.] Annabelle smiled. [And, after the Ministry business tomorrow, I'd like to head back to Britain for a little while - spend a few days at home, catch up with Cedric or Millicent or Susan or whoever's available - before we come back and see Nyllia again. But when we do come back here for her - so you know, Norberta - I want to ask her about if there's anything we could do in the United States. I want to know if there's anyone we could help, or get the support of there.]

[We can go back home if you want us to - thanks for letting me know what the plan is,] Norberta nodded her large head. [And, I think it's time to move on already, too. In the spirit of that, would you like me to go ahead to America and wait for you? I've heard it's just an unbelievably vast land, with so many varied environments and weather patterns, and I'd like to explore it all as much as possible.]

[If you'll be fine there without me for a couple days, then yeah, go ahead,] Annabelle assured. [Have fun sightseeing - but please, don't get into any trouble before I get there; we don't want any diplomatic incidents.]

[Oh, we both know the trouble won't start _until you get there_ ,] Norberta hissed her amusement. [No need to worry about that at all, Annabelle.]

[Still, be on guard,] Annabelle replied. [If people start thinking I'm sending you out scouting or something, they'll want to attack you on your own - and I don't want that.]

[And you think I do?] Norberta huffed in mock outrage. [I can't control anyone deciding to attack me.]

 _ **September 16, 1993**_

*Ycu, please don't die! Not now, not this year, not with those _things_ all around me!*

*I can't control when I die, you know this,* Ycu's soothing reply came to Annabelle. *You've known this for years. Now, I don't know when I'm going to die, exactly, but I do know it will be in the next few hours. I can feel that much. Annabelle, please, remember everything I've taught you. After I pass, don't linger on me. Don't hurt yourself over me, don't try and take your own life over me. Be controlled, be calm, be alert and _be practical_. Find yourself a new arachnid, immediately, please; I don't want you isolating yourself from everyone around you because of me. I don't want to be responsible for that - for any of that sort of behavior from you. Do you understand me?*

*I- no- sort of, I mean-*

*Do you understand me?* Ycu repeated, her voice clicking and clacking aggressively.

Annabelle choked on a sob (though the tears still ran) and nodded her head. *I...understand.*

*You will get past me,* Ycu stated, her aggressive tones bleeding away. *You'll get a new partner, you'll spend your time with your friends - Daphne, Astoria, Pansy and Lisa, and Confiance out in the forest - and your grief will recede. I promise you, Annabelle. The grief, the pain, it's all temporary - like the effects of the Dementors. When it's come and gone, you'll feel happy again, you'll feel good again, and you'll smile and laugh and...love again. You'll just...do all of that with someone else other than me. If you don't feel as if you can do this for yourself just yet, then would you do it for me? Do it to...let's say, honor the last request of an old arachnid?*

*For you,* Annabelle whispered in agreement. *And- Ycu, after you- after you go, I promise I won't forget your teachings, and I won't forget everything you've done for me, and- and I swear I'll keep doing whatever I can for your kind! Whoever I meet, whenever and wherever I meet them, whatever they need from me I'll do my best for them. I will!*

*Then our relationship can end,* Ycu said, in the softest voice Annabelle had ever heard from her before. *And it can end with so much love and happiness that even I can't control myself now, despite knowing better...than to...ever...*

*Fuck...* Annabelle breathed. She carefully cradled Ycu- Ycu's body in her cupped palm, and brought her lips down to kiss it. She drew in and let out erratic, whimpering breaths for the next several minutes - and she continued to stream swears at herself. At the situation. Even at Ycu's corpse (though she felt horrible about this last one). It was almost twenty minutes later when she finally, finally stopped it all. Her breathing evened out, and she started to think again. She concentrated on stopping her hands from shaking, and used the back of her free hand to wipe away the tears. She recalled every bit of her Transfigurations lessons, focused her mind and took up her wand. She pointed the tip at Ycu's corpse, narrowed her eyes and bit her lip, and visualized exactly what she wanted - just like Mcgonagall had always emphasized.

Her magic worked, affected Ycu's corpse, and it changed. Changed in a puff of smoke, yes - a crude and juvenile display of her inner power if ever there was one - but it changed. Ycu's corpse transformed into a chipped, dirtied silver ring, with an uneven and overly wide band, and a jagged orange gemstone encrusted in it. The ring wasn't perfect, the gemstone was terribly cut...but it was what it was. It was beautiful, and it was _her_. It was dumb, wasn't it? A dumb, overly sentimental, emotional human thing for her to have done. But as much as Ycu had always taught and warned Annabelle about being controlled, about being calm and practical in every instance of her life...Ycu had always understood and given Annabelle a certain leeway in the area of her human natures. Despite everything, Annabelle knew that Ycu would have understood this, too - and maybe, just maybe, she would have even felt a little bit flattered by it.

Annabelle slid the ring onto the ring finger of her right hand, took in a few more breaths, and then she got to her feet and left the empty Hufflepuff girls' dorm in favor of the very noisy, populated common room.

 _ **August 6, 1998 - African Ministry of Magic**_

"I'm here to report an incident at my hotel room last night."

A witch of tall stature, dark skin and darker hair gave a serious nod. She gestured into a side room, and led the way in her black robes. "Yes, please, come in - we were expecting your visit sooner rather than later, Ms. Potter; we were alerted to a magical altercation at your informed place of residence here in our country," she added, conjuring up a chair and table (with a tray of refreshments) for Annabelle. "What can the AME do to help you? Are you injured anywhere? Do you have any prior grasp of healing magics? Did you try them on yourself already? I'm African Magi Enforcer Aamina Abboud, but if you would feel more comfortable calling me simply Aamina, feel free to do so, please."

"Enforcer Abboud," Annabelle began, gratefully taking the seat and sipping from the water. "No, I'm not injured - but I do have experience with healing spells - and, thank you for the offer, for the water, and the help."

"All right," Enforcer Abboud said quietly, seating herself across from Annabelle at the table. She offered a smile - comforting, encouraging, kind in every sense. "Annabelle, could you start from the beginning? What you were doing, where exactly you were before the attack, and then go from there?"

Annabelle obliged, and she told it all to Enforcer Abboud: starting with her visit to Nyllia's tribe (though, she left out the goblin attack - that was a matter to take up with the Goblin Nation Queen back in Britain). She talked about the time spent there, included the time she'd gotten back to her hotel room as best she could remember, and she then started speaking about the actual attack. To her own surprise, her voice caught when she talked about Daphne. Daphne coming into the room like nothing, Daphne climbing on top of her, Daphne holding her arms over her head, Daphne kissing her, pressing down on her with that weight, Daphne looking at her so...

"Goddammit," Annabelle gasped, curling her fists on the table as her vision started to blur. "I'm- I'm sorry to get like this, I-"

"No," Enforcer Abboud said gently, shaking her head. "It's perfectly fine, perfectly all right, Annabelle. Know that you're safe here, that you're protected, and that we're going to do everything we can to help you, and to apprehend Mrs. Greengrass. Know that you can take your time to tell me the rest, if you feel like you can. If not, we could set you up in a room here and we could continue tomorrow. Annabelle...it's all right."

Annabelle shut her eyes, and a distasteful feeling rippled across her lips, like a buzzing, and she curled those lips and shook her head. "No, I'm fine. I can continue, I can talk, I can do this." She drew in a breath, let it go, drew in another, let it go too - repeated this a third time, then a fourth. And then she opened her eyes again, and she uncurled her fists. She swiped at her eyes and looked Enforcer Abboud in the face. "I can do this," she reiterated, clear and calm.

"Okay," Enforcer Abboud replied, giving another smile. "As long as you feel like you can."

So Annabelle continued her story, going through how she had fought Daphne off (literally so), and going on to the duel, and then to her escape by way of Norberta. When she was done with the tale, Enforcer Abboud informed her that she was good, smart, brave - told Annabelle to wait here in the Ministry's Law Enforcement Department for an hour or so, while she spoke with her Department Head about the whole ordeal. Annabelle did wait, drank the water which kept refilling itself, and put her head down on the table until Enforcer Abboud returned.

"Notices have gone out to every Enforcer in the country to be on the lookout for Mrs. Greengrass," Enforcer Abboud said, lingering at the door and holding it open for Annabelle. "and my Department Head will be contacting yours soon, in case she does or already has fled back to Britain."

"Thank you so much," Annabelle said, heartfelt as she stepped out of the room and into the corridor. She started off toward the atrium, and Enforcer Abboud followed right beside her. "It's been good here, it's been amazing, and the people are amazing, and the food is wonderful, and-"

"And the magi-arachnids?" Enforcer Abboud asked with a light smile on her dark lips. "They were hospitable to you, I take it?"

"They were," Annabelle confirmed, smiling too.

"I can't speak for anyone else," Enforcer Abboud started slowly, that smile still there. "but as for me, when I heard the rumors, then the confirmed news that you would be coming here to try and open relations with Nyllia, I expected that you would manage it without being killed - very few of us here have ever managed to gain any kind of audience with her, save the original meeting eighty-two years ago to establish the territory claim, and sign the treaty she conjured up for closed borders, and the consequences of not heeding them."

"I barely did manage it without being killed," Annabelle said honestly, her mind going to the goblins. "But yes, I did - and thanks. The vote of confidence is very much appreciated; I know there are a lot of people out there who think a great deal of negative things about me and what I've been doing. They're suspicious, they're scared, they're paranoid, or...they're just bigots who can't stand to see nonhumans getting a movement going. Whatever the reason, I know I haven't been too popular across the globe."

"I support what you're doing," Enforcer Abboud spoke, her dark eyes boring into Annabelle as they entered the atrium and stopped near the Floo area. "I don't know their people or Nyllia herself like you do, and despite our country's very open-mindedness and, let's say _advanced_ views on the rights of nonhuman beings, I'm sad to say I've had little contact with any nonhumans in my life...but I still support you in this. If you ever need one more opinion, one more vote, one more hand or one more wand at your side in this - for them - just give me a mirrorcall and I'll be there in an instant. I would love to meet many more nonhumans than I have, and to know their cultures."

"Thank you," Annabelle said, and she managed to grin. She stepped forward and offered her hand; Enforcer Abboud took it, shook it, with warmth and strength. "I won't forget you if that's ever necessary - and...even if it's not."

Enforcer Abboud's eyebrows raised slightly. "Oh?"

"It's always a good thing to have more friends, isn't it?" Annabelle went on, giving a bit of a shrug. "But if you'd rather I not mirrorcall you - if you're too busy, or you don't want to-"

"Oh, no, that's all right," Enforcer Abboud spoke quickly, her smile coming back. "How about I mirrorcall you a few days from now and give you my monthly schedule - it changes regularly, part of the job - and we can go from there? I'd be very interested in hearing about your experiences with nonhumans."

"If that works for you," said Annabelle, nodding in relief. She hesitated. Glanced toward the Floo fireplace. She gave Enforcer Abboud a small wave of parting, and then she grabbed up a handful of Floo powder and stepped into the fireplace. She threw it down and said clearly, "Grimmauld Place!"

Immediately after stepping out of the fireplace in the sitting room, Annabelle announced: "Nikolett, Sirius, I'm home!"

Annabelle's announcement was followed with the sounds of clattering and scraping in the dining room, and then fast footsteps and loud clacking, and then into the sitting room came Nikolett and Sirius Black. Both moved to hug her at the same time. They bumped shoulders, looked at each other, then hugged Annabelle right together. "What's this for?" Annabelle questioned as the life was squeezed out of her. "Did you really miss me that much that time?"

Sirius pulled back and frowned at her. "Annabelle, you were attacked - again!" He drew his wand and flicked it, and a Daily Prophet paper appeared. He flipped through it and all but shoved it into her face. "Read this and tell me it's not true!"

"Over a thousand years ago, the Wizarding Council cursed forevermore the dragon race, robbing them of their intellect, power, and place as a proper civilization in the world. But recent reports around the globe have shown evidence of a reawakening of their-"

"What? Ugh, Annie, not that: this!" Sirius sighed, exasperated. He flipped to another page and jabbed his finger at another article, which detailed her exploits in South America just a few short weeks ago.

"Oh, yeah, that. That's true," Annabelle responded, looking away from the article; she didn't need to read it. She'd experienced it, after all. "But it wasn't a big deal - I wasn't even hurt. I managed to get away easy enough."

Sirius drew in a long breath, held it for a few seconds, and let it all out in a woosh that fluttered Annabelle's hair. "Annie, that's great to hear - it really is - and I've been so proud of you, and of everything that you've been doing out there, but I just can't handle this. Every time you're abroad, every time there's a new article for me in the morning about you being set upon by a gaggle of vampires, or a group of pixies, or that one time with the hag-"

"Can we not bring up the hag incident, Sirius, please?" Annabelle interrupted, flushing. "Besides the fact that _that_ incident wasn't even from any place of malice-"

"Annie," Sirius growled, almost like his dog form. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "Just- just- god, Annie, can you promise me you'll be more careful when you're out there doing your thing?"

"I can promise that, yes, but I can't guarantee it," Annabelle agreed. "So: I promise to be more careful when I'm out doing my work."

"That's as good as I'm getting from you, so I'll be in the kitchen," Sirius said bracingly. He flashed a grin over his shoulder as he retreated down the hall. He called back to her as he disappeared through the kitchen doorway, "Would you like eggs, muffin, or what?"

"Eggs and a couple muffins will be fine, thank you, Sirius!" Annabelle called back. She turned her gaze to Nikolett in the ensuing silence. "How have things been here for you? Is that teaching position at Hogwarts still a sure thing?"

Nikolett stepped forward on her hooves, glanced down at the carpet, then took Annabelle's hand and kissed her lips. "It is, yes. Besides the attempt on your life again, did you accomplish what you set out to do there?"

"Yeah," Annabelle said shortly. She closed in on Nikolett and pressed herself against her front, and she ran her hands down along her ribs until the skin under her palms transitioned into fur between her fingers. "Nikolett, I'm so happy for you. I'm happy that you're happy. You are still happy about this, right?"

"I am still happy," Nikolett assured, smiling, and reaching around herself to grab both of Annabelle's hands. "Norberta did not run into any trouble as well, did she?"

"She was far away from all the action," Annabelle said humorously. "When you get right down to it with her, she's still the same scared little kitten she was when she was first hatched."

"That is good to hear," Nikolett nodded. She brought Annabelle's hands up to her face and rubbed them against her cheek, closing her eyes a moment and sighing her content. "I missed you so much. Your godfather is an amazingly kind, headstrong man, and I have enjoyed the time spent here in your home with him, but...but he is not you, Annabelle. And when you are gone, I take solace in the stars to tell me that you are all right."

"You've been stargazing for me?" Annabelle said quietly.

"I have," Nikolett confirmed, with a quaver in her voice that betrayed anxiety. She let Annabelle's hands go and took a step back. Her hands went to her extremely long dark hair, to twirl and twist them around her wrists. "I know we are not meant to, that it is a disrespect and abuse of the gaze of the heavens, but...but I just could not stand to be here and to be so unsure of whether or not you would come back to me again."

"Well, I'm not going to tell anyone if you don't want me to," said Annabelle with a smile. "If you want to keep doing that in order to keep an eye on me, that is."

"I love you."

"Love you too." The hallway was quiet. "Breakfast, then?"

"Breakfast, yes," Nikolett agreed. She took Annabelle's hand and led her down the hall into the dining room.

"So, Sirius, has Remus been by?" Annabelle asked, sitting down at the table and propping her elbows up on it.

"Almost every day," Sirius replied, laughing. He sat with her at the table and slid a plate of instant magic cooked eggs over to her with a minuscule Banishing Charm. "And so has Susan, you know," he added after a quick moment of remembering.

Annabelle paused, mid bite, feeling surprised. "Susan? Why? Is she okay? Is something going wrong with the tourna...Oh. The tournaments. She wants me to come and watch her, doesn't she?"

Sirius smiled and nodded. "She'd _like for you_ to be there to cheer her on, but she's maintained that she understands if you're too busy with your work to make it to any of the matches. Still, though, you're back here in time, and it'd probably be great for all of us to have an exciting outing together, wouldn't it? While the timing is all lined up. We could even rope Remus into it."

Annabelle looked to Nikolett, then back at Sirius. "I can do that. I can be there for her - and I'd love to, really. I'd love to spend the time with you, too, while I'm here. Is this something you've both already talked about?"

"We _were_ considering going, yeah," Sirius chuckled out, running a nervous hand through his disheveled black hair. "You being there with us will make it that much better, though."

"We know your work is very important," Nikolett spoke, an anxious hand of hers going to her own hair to mimic Sirius. "If the timing had been different- that is, if you had not come home right now- we still would have liked to..." She went quiet, and dipped her head to hide behind her hair.

"It's fine," Annabelle said casually - and sincerely. "If I'm away and I'm going to miss something fun, I don't want you two to hold off on that thing because I can't be there." She paused. "When are the matches, how long do they last, and-"

"Don't even ask about the tickets," Sirius cut her off firmly. "I've got more than enough gold for us all to get in and get good seats - you keep your money for your travels and your work, you hear me?"

"Yes, Sirius, thank you," Annabelle said, suppressing a sigh and trying to get some gratitude to show. "And, the matches, the length, the locations...?"

"Right, right," Sirius nodded, flashing a joyful grin that lit up his face. "Ah, well, first match is in three days - Britain against the Americans - and all eight matches will take place right here in Magical Britain for this season, and each of them will last...I've got no clue, actually, sorry sweetheart. But I'm sure the time will just fly by for us all, won't it?"

"I'm sure," Annabelle said, not fighting the smile that came over her lips. "And it'll be nice to see Susan again."

They ate together and conversed more. Annabelle learned that Sirius was considering finding work in Diagon Alley - Azkaban seemed to have humbled him, if anything positive could be said about the place - rather than keep relying on his vast family fortune and hanging around Grimmauld Place for long hours of the day. She spent a long time telling them about her travels, her encounters and triumphs, and even a few of the troubles along the way - except for the trouble with Daphne. This glaring omission was something Sirius latched onto very quickly.

"Where's Daphne?" he interrupted her in the middle of a blow-by-blow account of her battle with the goblins. "Annabelle, you go off traveling, you take her along, and you come back here and you tell us about it all...but you haven't once even said her name. Did something happen to her? Or did you two have some sort of argument? A fight? I know you two have had these - these sorts of little spats with each other since you were kids, but if this one was different, if it was bad enough that you won't even talk about her...Can you tell me?" Sirius leaned forward across the table and set his hand atop Annabelle's. "Did she hurt you? Did you hurt her? Tell me - so I know who to hex over the whole thing."

Annabelle pulled her hand out from under Sirius's, and her fingers went straight to her amber ring - to _her_. She took a breath. She took another, and a third, and then she spoke. "I don't know why, but when I got back to the hotel room last night she just...walked in and tried to rape me. Just like that, just...fast, and sudden, and I didn't really realize what was going on until...she already was kissing me, and she was pushing me down, and...I threw her off, got my wand, and then she just started trying to kill me. We got away, me and Norberta, and we slept the night away, and then today we just went to the African Ministry, and I made a report, and now...now I'm home."

"You're home now," Sirius said quietly, pale and shaking. He didn't try to reach out to her again. "Annie, sweetie, we're - Nikolett and I - we're here for you. We'll be right here. If you...want to talk, or you don't, or you want to break something and start screaming, or you just want to sleep some more, or...or if you want to get out and about again - we'll be here for you. Whatever you want, whatever you need, we're here, and feel free to do it. Okay?"

Annabelle stood. Nodded. She clutched her right hand to her stomach with her left. "I need to be in my room, and I'd appreciate it if Nikolett would be there with me," she said, with a calm look at her girlfriend. Nikolett shifted on her hooves, her expression a swirl of shock, sympathy, and anger; she nodded, but said nothing in return - she probably didn't trust herself to. Annabelle left the dining room with Nikolett on her heels. They entered the small, darkened bedroom off the ground floor hallway, and as soon as she could Annabelle shut the door and turned the lock. She lowered herself onto the floor mat, sitting with her legs outstretched and her back to the wall, and pulled the blankets up to her neck. She took some more deep breaths as she gazed up at the enchanted ceiling, that depicted forest canopy with peeking glimpses of night sky. A light breeze flowed from wall to wall, fluttering Annabelle's hair and cooling her heated skin. She could breathe easier, here and with this. And with the fact that, in the small, cramped room, it was difficult for Nikolett to rest without brushing against Annabelle. Nikolett was soft, she was pleasantly warm, and her hair glowed a beautiful sapphire under the enchanted ceiling's very real moonlight.

Still, Annabelle felt stinging tears on her face in the dark, despite her every effort to stay calm and cool. It wasn't working, none of it was working, and that didn't make sense. What also didn't make sense was why she was getting like this _here, now,_ when it was a day past and _three discussions past_ the actual incident! So why? Why here? Why now? How could she be this way? So...irrational? So stupid? So _pathetic, weak, so-_ She hated it. She hated herself, she hated Daphne, she hated Nikolett and Sirius, she hated this room, she hated...

Annabelle hated.


	4. Duels, Inside and Outside

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

* * *

 _ **August 7, 1998**_

In the hotel the day before, Daphne could have been under the Imperius Curse (she hadn't said a word throughout, as a poorly placed Imperius could cause in a victim). She could have been hit with a powerful Confundus Charm (again, Daphne's lack of any dialogue, any expression of even malice or inappropriate sexual _needing_ through their encounter seemed to suggest some sort of mental compulsion). Or she could have even incorrectly brewed a love potion, as terrible as that would be for Annabelle to consider of her childhood best friend (because if Daphne had brewed it up and taken it herself, to make herself able to act on some hidden feelings for Annabelle that she never could have expressed while _sober_ , Annabelle could have at least understood).

Or had that not even been Daphne at all? Polyjuice Potion, human transfiguration? Had someone taken Daphne's form and used it to get to Annabelle? Did they have Daphne now, somewhere, locked up? Was she being held, tortured, raped just for being Annabelle's best friend - and the assailant's ticket to Annabelle? Or had Daphne been killed quickly, painlessly, her usefulness only temporary to the attacker?

All of these thoughts and more went around and around in Annabelle's head throughout the morning. She thought of Daphne while she showered, dressed herself. She thought of Daphne while she was kissing Nikolett (and things with her that went a fair bit farther than kissing), and she thought of her while she was at the dining table, drinking an ice cold glass of water and waiting for Sirius to wake up.

And Annabelle thought: _Why didn't I think about all of this at the time?_ _Why didn't I try to subdue her, or even question her?_ Because she had been hysterical, that was why. She had been terrified, and nothing else. It was one thing to act on instinct, on _impulse_ at times, but what she'd done...? That had been panic. Blind as could be. And it had caused her to make mistakes. Stupid mistakes - stupid mistakes that would cause her to have stupid regrets until she got her stupid self back to face Daphne again. If she ever could. If Daphne wasn't dead, or in hiding, or anything besides somewhere Annabelle could find her again.

"I know what you're doing, kid."

Annabelle looked up from her glass to find Sirius making a groggy, sluggish entrance into the dining room. "What?"

Sirius gave her a sleepy kind of grin. He sat down across from her at the table, rubbed at his eyes and pushed his unkempt dark hair out of his face. "That look you've got going for you right now - I know exactly how you're thinking right now. And trust me, you don't want to start that. I did before Azkaban, did it in Azkaban, and I've done it a hell of a lot after I got out. Especially that first year on the run, when I was tracking Peter." He stole her glass away and drained the last of its contents before sloppily setting it down between them. He cleared his throat and continued on, "You're thinking you should've done something different, something better. Thing is, Annie, there is no better, no different: there's just what you did. And what you do after, and what you're going to do next time. So don't start this, you got me?"

"Okay," Annabelle sighed, tapping her wand to the glass to refill it; she snatched it up immediately as Sirius made a teasing grab for it, that grin of his back a moment. "Any idea when Susan will be showing up?"

Sirius shrugged. "I'd have to mirrorcall her, but usually she turns up a little past noon." He paused. "How're you feeling?"

 _Like I want to keep unproductively beating myself up,_ Annabelle thought, even as she recognized the thought itself as such. She sighed again and drained half the glass. _Sirius is right; I've got to stop this._ "I'm not trying to kill myself, or self-harm, or any of the things I did as a kid, so...I think I'm feeling pretty well, considering."

"Yeah," Sirius said slowly, leveling a serious look at her. "If you do start feeling that way again, though...are we going to have to go through another half a year of you hiding it all from me? Cause you know how we got through those times, don't you? You remember? And if you feel like that again, now, I mean - we're adults, Annie. You can talk to me, right? You can show me? We got you through it before, and we can get you through it again now."

"Yeah," Annabelle echoed her godfather, her tone as serious as his expression. "If I do get that bad again, I won't hide it from you. I won't lie to you. Not this time. Promise."

"All right." Sirius smiled, then conjured up a cup of hot tea for himself. "Good, good. Ahem, so, besides entertaining Susan and Remus, what are your plans for the day?"

"Mirrorcall a few dozen people," Annabelle replied, smiling too. "Hermione's probably been sitting by hers every minute of the day, just waiting for my face to appear. She wanted to come with me, you know, to South America, and then over to Africa - but she ended up telling me that her other obligations were too much to just go globe-trotting with me, not to mention the dangers involved weren't appealing for her. That's...why I took Daphne instead. She's always been...you know. Herself. I honestly think she doesn't care if she lives or dies. I don't know where it comes from, but she thinks that way." Annabelle shook her head and sipped her water; Sirius sat there with a look of utmost attention on his face, like a perked up dog. "Most everyone is busy starting up their own careers, getting their own jobs, and a few even are starting their own families - so I don't blame anybody for not wanting to or having the luxury to come along with me around the world."

"You think it's a luxury, what you do," Sirius barked his laughter. "What you _do,_ honey, is the most stressful shit I have ever had to hear about."

"You're my godfather, it's supposed to stress you out," Annabelle joked, in a rare moment for her (humor was never her strong suit). "For everyone else, it's exciting."

"If Hermione were to say she's in a place now where she _could_ come along with you when you get back out there, will you let her?" Sirius asked. "She's talented, intelligent, analytical, and...and you haven't seen her since leaving school. I think it could be good for you to have her around again, rather than..."

"Daphne?" Annabelle finished.

"Yes," Sirius nodded, frowning. "Best friend or not, Annie, after what she...I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure she never gets within a hundred feet of you ever again. I don't care if you don't agree, or if you want something different for her or for the two of you. If she shows up near you, and I'm there, I'll do things to her that I haven't done to anyone since the war," he finished, in a low, dangerous tone.

"No you won't," Annabelle responded, a statement of fact and nothing else. "You chose revenge over family when I was a baby, and you know where that got you. When we first met, you chose right that time, and now here we are. You're not going to ruin things for us by choosing revenge _this time._ If you do, I'm not visiting you in prison."

There was a heavy silence in the dining room. Annabelle sipped at her drink, while Sirius fumed and repeatedly clenched his fists on the table; he was mentally counting up, something he'd had to learn to do in the course of learning how to be a parent to her.

"Right," Sirius finally said, in a tense voice. "Right. Wouldn't want to break up the family, would I?"

"Right," said Annabelle. She picked up her wand and teleported her mirrortalker from her bedroom to the dining table in front of her. Picking it up and waving it at Sirius, she said, "Are you going to leave the room, or am I?"

"You should," said Sirius, that terseness leaving his voice at last. "Take it to the sitting room, please - I'll get breakfast going."

Annabelle stood; she left the dining room for the sitting room. Falling lazily onto the sofa, she held her mirrortalker up to her face and said clearly: "Hermione Granger." The mirror was blank and dead in her hand for a minute, until it suddenly began to vibrate and let out little bird-like trills. Hermione's face appeared in the mirror. And when she saw who had called her, her whole face lit up like the sun.

"ANNABELLE?! Oh my gosh, how have you been - I know _where_ you've been, make no mistake! - but these past weeks I've been hearing and reading about the most _incredible_ things! This morning's Quibbler, in fact, _just_ informed the world that while you were in Egypt you were attacked by someone _again?_ Though I also heard you were successful in your efforts to establish a rapport with the magi-arachnid tribe, so I'm sure you think it was all worth it! And I do agree! But-"

"Yes," Annabelle stated, a smile coming to her lips.

"Yes?" Hermione froze in mid sentence, confusion overwhelming her features.

"I was attacked again, I'm fine, and I succeeded," Annabelle briefly retorted. "It's good to see you again," she went on. "How have things been going with SPEW?"

"Local efforts, unfortunately, haven't been having nearly the same amount of success as your global," Hermione huffed. "At this point I'm sincerely regretting not having agreed to go with you."

"You can still come with me," Annabelle offered. "I'm back home right now, but I'm going to head out again in about a week, and if you're able, I would like to have you beside me."

"I'm most definitely able!" Hermione said quickly. "I just need to properly set up Dean and Seamus for SPEW management efforts, and give Luna and the Quibbler productions a heads-up before leaving. Did Daphne enjoy things out there with you?"

"She's not with me anymore," Annabelle said calmly. "Long story - but it's partially why I'm asking you now, again."

"All right," Hermione accepted, unquestioning and sensitive. "Well, erm, where would we be going next, and how long would these visits last? You spent an entire month milling around South America, I mean, and I can't afford to take _that much time_ away from my work here..."

"I'll make sure you don't get in trouble with your boss," Annabelle assured. "We'll be heading back to Egypt to hopefully get information on possible allies in North America, and then we'll pop over there to look into that. After that, I'd like to revisit a vampire coven down in Thailand, along with a popular pub and inn up in Scotland where I met a few others - plus Gertrude."

"The hag incident. Oh, the papers were running that one for _weeks,_ " Hermione sniffed, not in the least amused - she was actually _offended_ on Annabelle's behalf. "What you do in your personal life is frankly no one's business but yours." She hesitated. "However...If I'm going to be along with you on that particular visit, I'll want to _not_ share a room with you on whichever night you decide to be with her, if you please."

"Of course," Annabelle replied. "We're not going to just start having sex in front of you - unless you and Gertrude are all right with threesome, one night stands?"

"No," Hermione said blandly, nose scrunching and cheeks flushing. "No I am not all right with that."

"Okay, then," said Annabelle, smiling a little. "We won't have a problem."

"No, we won't," agreed Hermione, her palor returning to normal. "So, North America, a pop over to Thailand, another pop over to Scotland, and then where would we go after? Do you have any more places in mind?"

"Back to North America," Annabelle elaborated. "Where - I hope - we can pick up Confiance. Last I heard, she was fluttering around New York."

"No." Hermione shook her head on reflex. "Please, not her, why her? Annabelle! She _always_ destroys my hair! She's...a _nuisance._ She's dangerous, she's- she incites violence wherever she goes!"

"I know," Annabelle said, nodding into the mirror. "That's the last I heard of her, actually - that she was baiting a _very_ dangerous, _very_ infamous minotaur named Ransus. Something about nicking ancient weapons from his private collection. But I think it will be the perfect opportunity to both investigate her safety, and to garner an audience with Ransus. Maybe even his favor, if it comes to it."

"I- I-" Hermione stammered, paling all over again.

"Do you still want to come along?" Annabelle asked, forestalling any high-pitched outbursts on her friend's part.

"Only for the sake of global nonhuman experience, and to further the cause," Hermione said shakily. "But I'm not - I repeat, Annabelle - _I am not_ going with you on that New York gambit! I'll want to sit that one out. Just that one. A crime boss with a history like Ransus's is just...Annabelle, even for the cause, I think trying to open a dialogue with someone like that is going a bit too far."

"Maybe," Annabelle admitted. "But every nonhuman deserves to at least be heard, even if it's just by me - because no one else will hear them yet."

"Okay," Hermione grimaced. "Okay. If you'd let me end the call here, please, I'll go start packing right away, and get things squared away at work?"

"Sure. I'll see you here in a week."

Hermione gave a last nod, then her face disappeared from the mirror; and Annabelle spoke another name in her long list - maybe one she shouldn't have: "Lisa Turpin?"

"Annabelle? Well, isn't this a surprise," a cold, low voice came, as another familiar face from childhood filled the mirror. Lisa's face was pale, scarred, and her features were sharp and hard. Her auburn hair was cut to ear-length, very short, save the fringe. "Do you need something from me? _Please_ tell me you need something from me - so I can have the pleasure of telling you to go screw yourself."

"I'm going to have to disappoint you today," Annabelle responded, calm and neutral. "I just wanted to know how you were doing."

"Oh, you just - just wanted to disappoint me, huh?" Lisa laughed, and the noise was _ugly._ "Well, that isn't a shock; it isn't like you're exactly new to the concept, are you?"

"Lisa, I'm sorry that I hurt you by-"

" _You left me at the altar!_ " Lisa hissed, putting her face so close to the mirror all Annabelle could see were her eyes.

"I did," Annabelle said freely. "And that was wrong of me. I could say we had just turned seventeen, and I could say I didn't really know what I wanted, and I could say I was still working through a lot of my own problems, and I could say that maybe I had just convinced myself that I wanted to marry you...but I won't. I was wrong, I was horrible, and I hurt you in a way that I can't even imagine myself. And I am so, so sorry."

"What the hell do you want?" Lisa sneered, ignoring everything else very pointedly.

"Just to know how you're doing," Annabelle repeated.

Lisa hesitated. Her eyes flickered. She pulled the mirror back, and Annabelle saw her teeth working her lower lip. Then- "I'm on a job right now - North America - very frustrating." Annabelle knew what Lisa's "work" was: she was a certified bounty hunter, for hire by any magical government to track and bring in legitimately marked and highly dangerous targets.

"North America? I'll be heading there in about a week - along with Hermione."

"Is that right?" Lisa breathed, seeming suddenly very deep in thought. There was a silence that lasted almost half a minute before she spoke again. "If you really want to apologize to me, and make things up to me _proper_ , then meet me in New York. Manhattan Beach Park, Brooklyn - I'll be there waiting for you, on a bench in the east corner, on the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth. You go there, you find me there, you get your chance. If you don't, then too bad - I gave you three chances. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good - bye." Lisa ended the mirrorcall before Annabelle could get out another word.

Sighing to herself, Annabelle spoke another name into the mirror, and hoped her next call would go a little better.

"Susan, it's so good to see you again."

"It's great to see you, too!"

Just past noon, the door to Grimmauld Place had had its bell rung, and Annabelle had answered it to find Susan standing there. Susan, petite, well-muscled, blond, but still giving off a very sweet, kind, _soft_ sort of aura to her. Susan hugged Annabelle swiftly, and Annabelle led her into the sitting room while they chatted away.

"...so your match is in two days?" Annabelle was saying, sitting comfortably next to Susan on the sofa. "Do you think you have a chance at winning?"

"A match or two? Maybe," Susan said anxiously, with a small smile. "But beyond that...I'm still not sure the swap in team members will be enough. Don't get me wrong, we're definitely loads better than last season's lineup, but at the same time we're _new_ in more than one sense; I never honestly expected to get a spot on the team at all!"

"I'll cheer for you," said Annabelle. "Really, really loudly."

"And I'm sure that will mean a lot," Susan replied, blushing. "But you'd know better than anybody that determination alone in a duel isn't enough - skill has to be there, and skill can wipe out determination ninety-nine percent of the time just _because_."

"I know," Annabelle agreed. "How much have you practiced?"

"Eight hours a day, five days a week - on my own, that is. With the team, it's...it's less. But I think we still stand a good chance of pulling some wins!"

"If you end up having to carry your whole team..." Annabelle shook her head, trying not to laugh.

"I might," Susan said, not holding back _her_ laughter. "And if I do, I'll be asking the others to switch up their training hours to give us _all_ better results next season! But that's still far away, so, better stay focused on _this_ season."

Sirius entered the sitting room just then, with Nikolett trailing along behind him. "Sorry to interrupt you two, but Nikolett...ah..."

Nikolett flicked her tail wildly, wrung her hands as she looked to Annabelle. "I need to speak with you alone, please."

"All right," said Annabelle, standing up and crossing the room. She followed Nikolett down the hall and into the bathroom at the far end - a cool, spacious place that could still be private. Annabelle sat down on the toilet lid, crossed her legs and gave Nikolett her full attention. And she waited; Nikolett seemed to be struggling with her own thoughts, and what she should say. Or maybe _how_ she should say whatever she was about to say.

It took a minute - literally - but Nikolett finally said: "This relationship is not going anywhere."

Annabelle blinked. She felt something in her throat. She took a deep breath, let it out, and took in another. She took almost as long as Nikolett had to gather her thoughts. When she did, she said, "I know - and you wanted it to go somewhere - and I thought that I wanted that too. But, I'm sorry, Nikolett, I've sort of realized that I actually _don't_. It's my work; there's too much to do, _so much to do_ , so many places to go and people to see, help, and learn about...and in all that I've realized that I want all of that right now, and not what I thought I wanted before. At least, not yet. But I don't want to make you wait around for that with me. It'd be years and years of it. And you don't deserve or need that treatment. You _haven't_ deserved the treatment - I haven't been home too often, haven't been with you too much - and I'm sorry."

"That is fine, thank you," Nikolett said quietly, and she smiled. "Do you think that we should end the relationship between us, then?"

"If you do," Annabelle said, mirroring her quiet tones and her smile - for her sake. "Because you're right, and because you're right I do think that we should, at this point. We both want different things out of life, and, like I said, it'd be wrong of me to make you wait until I _do_ want what you want with me."

"All right." Nikolett nodded. "Then our relationship is over. It was a learning experience - about humans."

"And it was a learning experience for me about centaurs," Annabelle replied, uncrossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap.

"Are we still friends?" Nikolett asked, hesitant. "The loss of the romantic relationship does not also mean we lose the ties of the friendship before it, does it?"

"Oh, yeah, we're definitely still friends!" Annabelle said earnestly. "Please don't ever think otherwise."

"I will not," Nikolett replied, smiling in relief.

"Good." Annabelle nodded. "That's good." Nikolett stared at her a while, then she turned and left the bathroom without another word.

Annabelle let out a shaking breath, and buried her head in her hands.

 _ **August 9, 1998 - Magical Britain's Estrella International Dueling Stadium, London**_

"Now that the American team, the Iron Imps, has gotten into their positions, it's time to send out our home team of champions! The home team, the Battle-Hardened Boggarts, consists of: Susan Bones, Julie Vance, Kristina Walberg, David Arterio, Richard Parker, Jasper Hall, Nathan Kimble, and Tamara Edmond! Now, last season the Boggarts unfortunately finished last in the leagues, but, with a few new faces on the team this season, here's hoping they can bring some new and winning talent into the dueling arena with them!"

"It looks like the Boggarts have taken up position, so let's dim the lights and get the first duel of the season going! Those of you up in the stands get ready to cheer your teams on! Those of you watching from home best not think we've forgotten you: your specialized mirrorviewers - which are connected to the multitude of mirrorpanels we've set up around the arena - will allow you to not only watch the matches here, but they will also allow your champions to hear _your_ spirited encouragements as well! And lastly before we begin, I want to assure those of you in the stands this evening that the barrier encircling the arena is perfectly capable of catching and absorbing any stray magic performed by our duelists!"

"We'll begin the match in _five_... _four_... _three_... _two_... _one_!"

As the two teams spread out and moved forward into the twisting, almost randomly designed arena of dark corridors, magical obstacles, traps, arena shifters and other oddities, Annabelle leaned forward in her seat and gripped the safety railing, her eyes only for Susan. She'd promised to cheer for her old dormmate and friend, and she was going to do just that tonight.

Susan Bones went as far left as she could, following the curved floor of the arena to take her up and sideways - if gravity had any meaning in here, she would have been basically standing straight out and horizontal by now. As it was, she kept up her rushed pace through the corridors, going left, right, up some stairs, left again, left again...Left felt lucky to her.

It turned out not to be about a minute in, when she turned a corner and ran right into two others from the opposing team - Alice and Jason, they were called. A really good tag team in the arena. _Oh great!_

Susan ducked and weaved right around Alice, grabbed her elbow in her own and got behind her and shoved it up her back. Alice let out a yelp of pain and shock, and Jason held back with his wand aimed - he didn't want to hit his teammate. Susan swiftly made to jab her wand into the small of Alice's back and utter the incantation for the Stunning spell, but the situation and the darkness of it all meant that Susan's wand ended up poking the woman in the buttocks. Susan cried out the spell anyway, eliciting a little shriek from Alice before she dropped to the floor like a stone. Susan felt a millisecond of sympathy for her; she knew how bad a Stunner to the butt could sting!

Jason, now free to start hurling spells, immediately cast a Blasting Curse right at Susan; she threw up a shield, but the force of it still knocked her off balance, and sent her spinning around like a ballerina. Susan was just righting herself again, when Jason's wand flashed silver, and then a corresponding silver magical pulse appeared beneath her feet. She went to lift her feet and throw herself into a backwards dive, but she found the bottoms of her feet stuck to the floor. Jason cast a Stunner, which Susan reflected right back at him. They did this two more times before Susan let herself drop unexpectedly to the floor, bodily and hard enough to hurt. But it let her throw a Blasting Curse of her own for Jason's ankles, which he had to jump straight up to avoid. He came back down and immediately put up a shield to reflect Susan's triple Stunner followup into the ceiling!

 _Damn!_ Susan pointed her wand at her own feet and undid the sticking spell, then rolled away and got to her feet with the momentum alone. She took a proper stance again, flashed a smile, and then she ran right at Jason. He looked at her in shock, in confusion, but then he threw up a shield and just stood there, evidently deciding she would just bounce herself right off with her own stupidity and recklessness. But Susan wasn't being reckless. She had closed the gap to five feet when she stabbed her wand directly against the barrier, muttered out a certain special spell of hers, and then a six-inch wide hole appeared in the shield. Susan pushed the tip of her wand through and cast a point-blank Stunner; Jason was caught in the face, his eyes wide with shock, and then the shield fell as he slumped to the floor.

Susan took a staircase two at a time, jumped her way to the second floor landing, and proceeded down a strange, blue glowing corridor. As she hurried down this corridor, she felt a force shifting, working on her, and then she was running in a spiral - going from floor to left wall, to upside down, to right wall, down to the floor again, up to the left wall, upside down again, etc. She couldn't deviate from this movement pattern; she tried to jump, or go any other direction or way, but her body wouldn't do it. She just had to run on and follow the motion. She got through it without any incidents, and took a right corner at the end. She emerged into a "T" shaped hallway. She was coming in from the left of that "T". She had just about reached the middle of it when a blue streak of magic flew straight for her chest from somewhere far ahead.

Susan didn't know what the magic was, so she dodged it by ducking and flattening herself against the wall. She squinted into the dark, but she couldn't see anyone in front of her. Someone must have gotten their hands on an invisibility potion. Well, Susan knew it was rated to last only ten seconds, so she figured whoever it was didn't even have that long left. She had to make that time go down to zero without getting taken out. She put up a shield, thrust her wand out and cast three successive Stunners, followed by a Blasting Curse aimed for the floor a few feet ahead, and she ended it off by pointing her wand at the ceiling and pulling _down,_ while focusing on a transfiguration. A horizontal section of the ceiling, about two feet by two feet, turned to a bubbling liquid, and that liquid rained down to the floor like a waterfall and solidified into a brand new wall in the arena. Susan went back the way she had come, sprinted back through the spiral corridor, and turned and stopped at the landing. She took a few careful steps back down the stairs, so that anyone in the corridor would just see her upper body, and she leveled her wand.

Her visible opponent came around the corner into the blue corridor - Isaac, a short, skinny, fast and agile guy Susan's own age. This guy was going to be a real problem, Susan thought. _She_ was used to being the small, speedy one in combat, not facing them herself. This match-up was going to be a lot harder than it'd been to use Alice's height and Jason's brawny weight against them!

Susan cast six Stunners down the corridor, all of which Isaac blocked and sent into the ceiling. She cast a Blasting Curse, then a Stunner, then a Blasting Curse - Isaac ducked under and around the first Blaster, starting off at a run toward her. He was locked onto the spiral path, to his own disadvantage and confusion. But he kept running, and Susan swore she saw him give an actual _shrug_ about it! On the spiral path, he was able to easily avoid all the rest of Susan's line of spells. And he was getting used to it, understanding the pattern of motion. He ran faster, and he started throwing spells at Susan - from the walls, from the ceiling, the floor! They came in toward her from weird angles, some of them even spiraling and zigzagging, forcing her to actually back down the stairs and catch them awkwardly on her shield - and twice to do a dangerous twisting dodge on the staircase.

Susan had reached the first floor again, and she was in a full retreat now that took her past the Stunned figures of Alice and Jason. She didn't really take note of them as she passed them by...but she really should have. Isaac came down the stairs hurling three spells to her one, evidently not _just_ a fast mover: he was fast with his spellcasting too. Faster than really anyone Susan had ever seen. Susan cast a Blasting Curse - Isaac blocked it, and then he sort of paused.

Susan sort of paused.

It was a weird moment. It was dark, silent, and they stared at each other, together in that corridor. And then Isaac smirked, raised his fists and shifted his stance, and things for Susan got _way worse._ She'd heard the term _versatile_ used for American mages, and of course she knew that they practiced heavily with wandless magic as opposed to wand magic, but what happened next was just... _madness._ Isaac kicked out to his left with a foot, and a blue light flashed out from the side of his ankle. The light struck Alice, and then she was awake and jumping to her feet again. Isaac punched his fists at Susan rapidly, and she blocked six rapid Blasting Curses even as she watched him kick out with his _right foot_ toward Jason; the same blue light flashed, and then Jason was getting up again.

And Isaac just _kept coming_! He was whirling and twisting, almost like a dance, kicking out and swiping his hands in front of him, sweeping his legs around, and every single motion just flowed effortlessly into the next, adding and complimenting, and then all sorts of magic and spells were heading for Susan. She didn't know what to do, where to go, so she made a shield and just kept backpedaling. But some of those spells weren't just effect-on-contact. There were _charms_ and _transfigurations_ in there! Susan's boots sprouted pale, skinny arms on each side that reached right up and seized her wrists, hips and shoulders; the ceiling twisted inward and turned into a writhing tentacle of stone that swung for Susan and caught her in the sternum, sending her flying back several feet with a loud cry of pain; and when Susan lay there and tried to do away with the arms coming out of her boots, her shirt suddenly constricted and lengthened, trapping her arms at her sides.

Alice and Jason both took advantage of Susan's helpless state and cast Stunners at her almost simultaneously! Susan continued to lie there until the spells were just a few short feet away, and then she rolled onto her side and jerked her legs up to her chest, catching the Stunners both on one of the enchanted arms. That arm fell limp, to hang uselessly from her boot like a wedding gown trail. The other was still a problem, as was the way her shirt was trying to nearly eat her like a giant constricting snake!

Susan bent her wrist and twisted her body enough to point it at her shirt, and she hastily began casting reversion spells on it. Alice and Jason weren't nice enough to give her the time to do that; they both started forward and began hurling Stunners at her again. They didn't let up! It was almost a constant stream of them, Susan saw. She bent her wrist outward and threw up a shield; the spells battered away at it, going every direction. Susan pointed her wand at herself again behind the shield and finished off the anti-spell, and her shirt shrunk back to normal and let up on her. She reinforced the shield with another casting and set to work on the arm still coming out of her right boot. The arm was swerving and trying to grab her wand hand now. She grabbed onto it with her free hand, stabbed her wand into the side of it and cast a Blasting Curse.

That wasn't really her best idea ever. The force of the spell confined inside her shield hit her in the chest like a moving car, and she felt something in there _break._ She gasped, saw stars, and her shield fell. She lay there in horrible pain, desperately aiming her wand at herself and trying to focus on a healing spell, but she couldn't do it.

She felt weird all over, she felt tears in her eyes, and she knew she was whimpering and moaning like a dying animal.

A dim part of her noted that Alice, Jason and Isaac had stopped pressing her, stopped advancing on her. This part of her was the one to notice the trio hurry over to her and drop down to the floor at her side. They raised their hands and directed their palms at her almost like one entity, and the center of their hands glowed blue as they muttered out some spell she didn't know.

Susan felt better a few moments later. A whole lot better. Most of the pain was gone, but there was still a weird tingling all over her body. Including on her face. "Thanks," she told them uncertainly as she got to her feet. "But I don't think I needed it?"

"Do you not know how bad you were hurt from that?" Isaac spoke, incredulous. "How bad you're _still hurt_? They might call off the match, you might have died on us, we might have to-"

"You cast a Blasting Curse inside a shield," Jason interrupted, in a deep but kind voice as he loomed over Susan. "You could have died. You have burn injuries that still will need to be treated at a hospital, even after your on site medi-mages get down here."

Susan felt her face, and she realized just how bad things were. She leaned into the wall, feeling a sudden dizziness wash over her. "I want to continue with the match," she said anyway - really dumbly. She even raised her wand and pointed it at Jason. He just tore it out of her hand and shoved it into his pocket, all while shaking his head at her.

"No," Jason refuted. "Sorry, but you're done."

"I don't want to forfeit!" Susan said firmly, doing her best to stand upright and show she still could fight. But even as she said this, the universe contradicted her; the dark walls of the arena turned translucent as glass, letting in a flood of light bright as day. Susan could hear concerned cries and murmuring coming from all around the stadium. "I don't forfeit! I don't...I don't...don't-"

Susan's world went dark, and she hit the floor with tears in her eyes that had nothing to do with her injuries.

Annabelle watched things go to hell for Susan, and she tried to stay calm and in her seat - unlike a lot of others in the stands. She wanted nothing more than to pull out her wand, jump down there into the arena and do whatever she could for her dormmate...but that was foolish thinking; she couldn't do anything for Susan, not with the state she was in. Not even after those three opposing team members had come together to heal her, right off the bat and without hesitating. No, the only people who could really help Susan were the medi-mages swarming the arena to converge on her.

Anything Annabelle tried to do might actually make things worse for Susan. So she stayed in her seat. She listened to the commentary, the calls for calm, for orderly behavior, and she watched Susan's teammates rush across the now empty arena to be with her.

After the medi-mage team had been working on Susan for a few minutes, they portkey'd out of the stadium, and a call went out to everyone in the stands instructing them to leave (calmly and orderly, of course), and telling them that they could have half the price of their tickets refunded at the entry booth.

Annabelle looked at Sirius, who was gazing almost longingly at the refund line. Then he shook his head, took her hand and disapparated without much of a warning. Annabelle unsteadily reappeared in the sitting room of Grimmauld Place; she immediately went for the sofa, falling into it and closing her eyes.

"Sorry," Sirius murmured, collapsing beside her. He ruffled her hair, put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him.

"It's okay," Annabelle muttered back, burying her head in Sirius's chest.

"That was a really dumb, dangerous move on Susan's part," Sirius said quietly, sounding like he was talking to himself more than to Annabelle. "She could've just taken the loss, been out for the team and taken the chance that a teammate would have come along to wake her up. But instead she decided to blow herself up just to not lose."

Annabelle agreed - though not so crassly - but she said nothing. She couldn't really think of anything to say, anyway. She just hoped Susan would be okay in the end.

 _ **August 14, 1998**_

"You ready to get going?" Annabelle asked Hermione. She got a smile in return, along with a handbag held up to her face.

"I think so, yes," Hermione said brightly. "Everything's cleared with my boss, I've got everything I'll need in here, and I've even spent the past few days brushing up on my dueling skills - in case we run into trouble. Considering it's _you,_ I'm sure that's going to be something of a given," she added with a bit of a laugh.

"Then let's go." Annabelle took Hermione's hand, gave it a squeeze. "Remember when we get there that I'll have to leave you a ways outside Nyllia's territory, and that no matter what happens you should _not_ try crossing that border, or you will die."

"I remember," said Hermione, with a gulp and a serious nod. It seemed to have just really set in for her how real things were going to get from here on out. And how dangerous.

Annabelle concentrated on the Sahara Desert, and she apparated, taking Hermione along with her.


	5. A World of Affairs

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

* * *

Annabelle apparated from sands above right down into the underground den of Nyllia and her tribe.

*Hi,* she greeted the immediate swarm of a few hundred magi-arachnids, who all ranged from as small as a poodle to as big as a house. They all clicked and chattered around her - _about her_ , she could tell. Then a wave of calm seemed to ripple over them all, starting nearest to Annabelle and going farther and farther back. Annabelle stayed calm, stood still, and kept her expression blank. *Elyrie, are you somewhere in there?* she called out with a voice magically enhanced to reach out across the masses. There was a faint rustling far in the back, then silence again. And then a few dozen arachnids were clearing a space in front of Annabelle; she turned her gaze to that space, and she waited. It didn't take but a minute or two for the dirt and rock to lift up like a toilet lid, and out of the dark of an even deeper underground emerged Elyrie.

Elyrie was about the size of a horse, and her dirtied exoskeleton was unique due to all the crisscrossing and zigzagging lines of neon scarlet magic. Annabelle had talked to her on last visit, and she knew what the lines were for. Shortly after Elyrie's hatching a few brief years ago, she had run afoul of a native magical creature - a giant scorpion - and had ended up being stung, and cursed to die within the hour. But some of the other, older arachnids had been there with her at the time, and they had pooled their own powers together in order to bind and slow the curse. They couldn't remove it, but what they had done for Elyrie had bought her at least another dozen years of life. These were years that Elyrie had been spending very wisely, despite her still quite young age. Despite it all, she was determined to achieve things in her life that others her age _should not be able to achieve_ \- something that she and Annabelle had in common.

Perhaps this drive that they shared, this drive that Elyrie had for herself, was why Annabelle was not surprised when Elyrie's first words to her were: *I heard you're going to Santellio'Nera - North America, to you - and I want to go too. I can contribute with valuable knowledge.*

*How do you know where I'm going?* Annabelle had to ask.

*Everyone here knows where you are going.* A great rumbling rocked the ground, and Annabelle lifted her head high and looked to the distant side of the den to see the ever-towering Nyllia making her way toward her. Nyllia's voice carried, deep and rumbling as the earth. *Everything that is said above, we who dwell below will hear it.*

*Okay,* Annabelle said slowly, shifting on her feet. *So, you know where I'm going, and so you have to also know what I plan to do when I get there. Can you help me with that?*

*I can, yes,* Nyllia answered, a touch of warmth in her voice. *In Santellio'Nera there exists a great tribe leader, Trucik, who would be willing to enter into a relationship with you the same as you have with me. However, her tribe's code is...different from most others, and this will make it exceedingly difficult and very dangerous for you if you are to attempt to approach her - or any in her tribe.*

*What's the problem?* Annabelle asked, holding away a frown.

*Trucik's tribe survives and thrives by cannibalizing our own kind.* For the first time, Annabelle heard flat-out _disgust_ in Nyllia's voice, and a very real bite of anger. *She assaults and consumes other tribes, and takes their territories for her own. If we arachnid tribes had any such concept like your human one of "public opinion," I believe Trucik and her tribe would be the lowest in our collective esteems across the planet.*

*And this is the person you want to send me to?* Annabelle spoke carefully. *There's no else over there who might be a bit more approachable?*

*No.*

*Explain.*

Nyllia dipped her head to stare directly down at Annabelle. *Santellio'Nera is different, and it is not just Trucik's tribe that is run by different laws and rules - the majority of the tribes there are...very different from mine, and even from the ones in your Great Britain home. If you are to make any progress there at all with your mission, you must connect with Trucik, first and above all others. All unconquered tribes there currently defer to her, though they do so only because she promises them a significant delay in their cannibalization.*

*And why does she do that?* Annabelle questioned. *Why wouldn't she just take them, like all the others?*

*Because these remaining tribes have knowledge and abilities that she desires, wholly unique to their species and their tribe cultures, and if she were to annihilate them these prizes would be lost.* Nyllia paused. *There is also, from what I have heard, a problem of numbers; her constant invasions have dwindled her own tribe's members, to the point now where she has no choice but to hold off and produce enough hatchlings to make up the difference. I have also heard that she has been attempting to breed a new queen, so as to replace herself if she is to die, though she has been having no success in this thus far; queens require time-consuming and unique incubation, and even then the chances of successfully hatching one is extremely small.*

*So, you want me to get Trucik for the cause, because she'll then instruct, order, or demand that all the others follow her lead?*

*Yes.*

*Okay.* It made perfect sense to Annabelle. She turned her attention back to Elyrie and said, *So, you want to come with me? How are you going to do that?*

*The _lucar_ bridges - a network of passageways we've created that connect to other tribe homes across the planet,* explained Elyrie. *They're what let us travel the world without being spotted by your nonmagic human types. Well, those of us that care about abiding by your Statute of Secrecy at all,* she added.

*There are a lot of humans who don't care to follow it, either,* said Annabelle. *I can't tell you not to go, and I do like you, and if you have knowledge I can use, then feel free to go over there your own way. We can meet up wherever you like - whenever you like.*

Elyrie told Annabelle her planned meeting place and time, and they left their separate ways. Elyrie disappeared into a swirling sand whirpool on the ground, and Annabelle disapparated back to Hermione on the surface of the desert.

"Come on - I've got the information we came for," Annabelle greeted Hermione, who's tense demeanor broke into relief at her reappearance.

"So we have a lead over there?" Hermione asked quickly, delighted.

"Yes." Annabelle took Hermione's hand, and disapparated a second time.

* * *

 _ **Manhattan Beach Park, Brooklyn NY**_

* * *

After their arrival in New York City, Annabelle and Hermione had checked into a two-person hotel suite (in the midtown Manhattan DoubleTree Hotel), and Annabelle had explained to Hermione about Lisa's presence in the city, _and_ her request for a face-to-face meeting for the first time in months. Hermione hadn't judged Annabelle for the whole running-away-from-her-wedding affair when it had actually happened last year, and she had simply answered that it would probably be a good thing for them both, and that she was personally just happy to be able to go to the beach again - she hadn't been for a few years, since she was a teenager. With idle chatter, they unpacked a few little things in the suite, and generally just started making themselves at home. Because this would _be_ their home for a while, their base of operations in New York.

Then they had gone to meet with Lisa at the agreed location.

On a bright and sunny day, Annabelle found Lisa exactly where she said she would be.

"I didn't expect you to actually show up. I guess you really have learned your lesson, haven't you?"

"Yes." Annabelle gestured calmly to the empty spot on the bench beside Lisa. "Can I sit with you, please?"

"Sure. Why not." Lisa shrugged, scooting over to the edge of the seat. "I'm in a good mood today."

"Because I showed up when you asked me to?" said Annabelle, sighing as she sat down with Lisa.

Lisa gave her a sideways look, and a small smile grew on her lips. "Hell no - it's because my target is just over there, and as long as he doesn't go anywhere, I'll be handing him over to the Magi United States government for a considerable fee at the end of the day. Financial security puts me in a real good mood. Same with life security, Anna. Social security…legal security…It's just so great to know that when you've committed to something, that you'll be able to trust it'll still be there, and that you can lean on it when you need to."

"Okay, you're going to open with this, then," Annabelle sighed, shaking her head. "And I deserve this, so it's fine - so I'm going to sit here and let you keep at it until you get bored of it, and decide to have a more productive dialogue with me about how you feel about the issue."

"More productive dialogue?" Lisa repeated, scathing. "If that's what you want from me, then how's this for productive dialogue: Calling abandoning your bride at the altar an issue is something I think is more than a little fucked up! Isn't it, Anna? Isn't it?! Shows how little you actually still care about it these days. How much you just don't see how much you hurt me. And that, that Anna, is a fucking issue!"

"I know you're still hurting over it," Annabelle replied, looking out at the ocean's glistening shallows. "I know that, okay? I do. And I'm sorry. It was important, it was emotionally…you were invested. And I could have been - should have been - more invested, myself. For you. I should have been sure, I should have talked to you. I should never have just ran like that. I wasn't sure, then, Lisa. I wasn't sure about you, or myself, or us, and I should have been before telling you yes. I shouldn't have kept on with it, after saying yes and knowing I wasn't sure about it all." She took a breath, looked at Lisa full on - in the eyes. "And we can sit together here, and we can talk about all of it, but…it's been a year, Lisa. A whole year now. So no matter what you think, or what I think, or what you say, or what I say, I don't know what this will even accomplish."

Lisa stared at her with a curled lip and trembling fists in her lap. She dropped her head to her chest and leaned forward off the bench. Her hands came up over her head to hold the back of it, and her nails dug into her short hair. "It was a year for you, but for me it was yesterday," her muffled tones came. "It was yesterday, Anna - goddammit, why the hell can't you understand?!"

"I - I don't know," Annabelle admitted, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I just - I don't know what to say, I don't…know how to understand. I know I was wrong, I know I hurt you, and I know you're still hurt. But beyond that? I don't know what you want from me, and I'm not even sure what you want me to understand. It's done, it's past, we're both out in the world doing our jobs and our passions, and why are you bringing any of this up?" She tried to take another breath, but this one was caught in her throat somewhere. "I don't know how to understand what you want me to."

Lisa suddenly sat upright again. Her hands went to grip the seat under her, and she sort of gritted her teeth and stared out at the waters for a few moments. Then she turned to Annabelle with her whole body; their knees touched. "I guess…spending your first ten years of childhood locked in a little cupboard under the stairs just does that to a girl, huh? You just - you physically can't understand me, can you? You're mentally, literally incapable of it, is that right?"

"I…yeah." Annabelle looked away, swiping at her eyes as her vision blurred. "I guess that's it. I just…I can't understand, and I don't think anything could make me. I'm sorry. I just never got that lesson, I never figured out how, or…something."

"Fine," Lisa said, in thick tones of sadness and bitterness alike. "I'll just drop it all, then. Just never bring it up again with you. If it'll literally just be like trying to get a brick wall to sing…then fine. I guess we're done here, so get going. Get back to doing the shit you actually understand." Lisa stood, and started to walk away.

"Daphne raped me."

Lisa stopped. Turned very slowly back to face Annabelle. "What?"

"In Egypt, it was over a week ago, and she raped me." _Why am I talking about this? Why did I bring it up? Why am I crying? And why did I bring it up with Lisa, of all people?_ "We were in our hotel room, and she just…did it. The details weren't in the newspapers - they just said I was generically attacked again - but that's what really happened. She raped me, and then she tried to kill me when I fought her off."

"Fuck." Lisa screwed up her face and came back to the bench. Sitting back down, she put herself very close to Annabelle. So close that their shoulders were together. Lisa put a hand on Annabelle's knee and looked at her up close. "I'm sorry to hear that. I mean, fuck, Anna. We graduate Hogwarts, and now it's like we don't even know anybody we spent seven years with. Look, if we can't make any headway with my issues, then feel free to talk to me about yours - if you want to, or need to, or anything like that. I can take a mirrorcall from you, for that, if you want to talk about it - about her. I can't believe she'd do that…but I believe you that she did."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. And hey, if anyone posts a bounty on her, I'll be the first to pick it up," Lisa promised.

* * *

 _ **August 15, 1998 - Great Piece Meadow, New Jersey**_

* * *

"Norberta, what are you doing?"

Norberta startled in the brush; she swung her whole body around in a panic that sent several trees crashing down around them. She sat down on her haunches and reared her long neck, looking down at Annabelle with wide eyes. Her tail snapped out behind herself and then curled in around her, and her massive leathery wings folded at her sides to hide whatever she had grabbed - Annabelle had only caught a flash of leathery white. *Nothing! Why would I be doing anything? There's nothing to do - we're in a swamp! A smelly, wet, nowhere-place swamp. There's nothing here, no one here, and I was just taking a nap away from the eyes of the humans on the freeway a couple of miles in... _that_ direction.* She indicated with a toss of her head and flick of her tongue - and not with her tail, as she usually would have. The tail she had tucked away beneath her wing still.

*Norberta,* Annabelle started delicately in draketongue, not moving from where she stood. *You've never judged me for anything I've done with anyone, and any problem I've had, or any situation I was in you've done nothing but support me. And I love that, and I love you, and...you have to know that it goes both ways; I'm _never_ going to judge you, and I'll always be here to help you. So if something is going on with you, or something happened to you while you were alone here, or maybe it's just that you decided to leave a trail of one night stands throughout the continent, I am going to be here to support you - did you forgot that I was there to see you the day that you hatched?* she added with a smile.

Norberta's huge cat-iris eyes blinked. She let out a puff of fire, shifted her foreclaws, and then she opened her wings and carefully uncurled her tail to reveal a single, large egg.

*Oh,* gasped Annabelle. She looked at the egg, looked up at Norberta's face, then at the egg and back again. She was honestly speechless. *Oh - okay. Okay, you...this is...okay. What do you want to do? Do you- do you need my help with looking for a safe place to incubate, for the immediate future? And after...after they hatch, would you need help with raising them? I'll do anything you ask - I'll throw everything else away, put it all on hold, and I'll be there for you on hand and feet if you need me to be.*

*That's appreciated,* Norberta's body slumped in relief, and she settled in the swamp floor. *But aren't you going to ask me how it happened? Or when?*

*If you want to tell me,* Annabelle replied. *But otherwise, I'm not too interested in the specific details of your sex life - something I admit I didn't think even existed until just now.*

*It's not a sex _life_ , it was just a sex _event_ ,* Norberta said quickly. *Just one time. I met another dragon like me here - a smart, civilized one - and after a few days of adventuring together, we were holed up in the mountains on the border of Canada because of some very angry thunderbird-riding dwarves, and I just sort of asked him if we could have sex, and...and so we did.*

*Okay. So was it just sex and you're done with each other, or do you want...what do you want from this?*

*I think we're still friends, and I'd like to keep being friends - maybe go on some more adventures - but he would not be my first choice of partner in raising my child. My first choice would actually be you.*

*Co-parenting without a relationship? Okay. Yeah, I can do that with you, no problem.*

Norberta pounced on Annabelle, took her to the swampy ground with huge claws, and gave her face a huge, sloppy _lick_. *I love you!*

*Love you too,* Annabelle gasped, resigning herself to laying in the swamp after a futile attempt at moving Norberta's claws. *By the way, your hiding place here wasn't very good - I was able to track you easily enough. If I could, anyone else could have too.*

*Next time I'll choose a cave,* said Norberta, contemplative.

*Glad to hear it. Now, please stop crushing me? And tell me how you feel about going back to Britain - Hermione and I are going to revisit some old friends of mine.*

Norberta lifted her claws off Annabelle and stepped back. She looked at her egg intently. *I'd like to stay here. Incubate here, hatch them here. I won't risk losing them with a flight over the ocean.*

*Okay. Let's see if we can't find you a much safer place to live here...*

* * *

 _ **August 19, 1998 - Scottish Highlands, Scotland**_

* * *

After a few days with Norberta in the States, Annabelle and Hermione had nothing left to do but to leave her and press on with the campaign, and just hope she would be fine on her own again. Though, Annabelle did promise to visit Norberta again a lot sooner than the last time. But for right now, they were back in Britain on a chilly night.

"The Bloody Spade Inn?" Hermione eyed the sign hanging over the doorway with an open frown. "Annabelle, is this place...errm, _safe_?"

"Depends on the day," Annabelle said honestly. "Listen, just remember a couple of things and you'll be fine. One: Don't look at anybody funny, no matter what they're doing, what they look like, or what they are. If anyone looks at _you_ funny, just look away. Two: If anyone asks you to have a drink with them, conjure up your own or signal the barkeeper - only trust the barkeeper. Three: Keep to yourself in general, unless you're confident enough that you can win a fight with anyone currently in the place. Lastly: Don't talk to the harpy on the table near the stairs - she goes by the name of Anju."

"Err, all right, I'll keep this all in mind," Hermione said, drawing a nervous, quick breath. "Though, what exactly is the reasoning for that last rule?"

"She isn't dangerous or anything - she actually has a good cause going for her - but I don't think you want to end up a mother so soon, do you?" Annabelle responded, giving her friend a very serious eye.

"No, I don't," said Hermione. Then, because she always had to _know_ , she asked, "What's her cause?"

Annabelle unbuttoned her long coat, let her ponytail go free, and went to lean against the wall; Hermione joined her, shooting a wary look at the door that was not even five feet away. "Anju is on a noble mission to save her people. She used to live in a lakeside forest nearby - it's actually over in that direction, past a mountain or two - but, about a year ago, a magical plague got to her and everyone in her community. And they didn't realize they had it, or what was happening to them all, until the bodies started dropping. The symptoms weren't gentle, it wasn't gradual. But what it was, was untreatable. Nobody even knows what it is today, and...it took everyone. Every harpy - except Anju. She was immune, or a fluke, or something, and it didn't get her. She had to watch village after village go to the disease, had to watch over five hundred of her people die when she couldn't do a thing."

Annabelle drew a breath, let it out in the cold, watching the smoke swirl. She shoved her hands into her pockets again and gazed out across the calm night ocean. "Now here she is, out here, mingling with so many other unknowns to her - people, species, communities not hers - and she's doing everything that she can to...entice people into procreating with her. We're really lucky we live in a world where interspecies relations are both possible and frequent enough - and even normalized in a few places so far. If she couldn't do that, if she didn't have all of us out here to do this with - if all she had was her own species, just other harpies - they'd be at severe risk of dying out entirely."

"As it is, the risk is...not so high. But it is there, it is substantial, and she's trying really hard to not let it happen. She's desperate, she's traumatized, and I don't blame her for using whatever she needs - pity, sympathy, gold - to accomplish her goal. I admire her for it, and I respect her for never forcing herself on anyone when it would probably be so easy for someone of her species to do - and when some do, in other places, other communities, even without the threat of extinction. The kidnap and rape rates for people at the talons of harpies are pretty high in some parts of the world; that's where all the mythology and stereotypes come from for them, you know."

Hermione didn't speak for a long time. She spent it chewing on the inside of her cheek and mirroring Annabelle in looking out at the ocean. "Did you help her, the last time you were here?" she said at last, in a hesitant, soft sort of voice that made it clear she thought she was crossing some sort of line in asking.

Annabelle smiled without looking over at Hermione at all - not even a glance. "Yeah. There's going to be a batch of a dozen half-breed harpies in the world soon with my hair, my eyes, my nose, my lips - hopefully none of my worse personality aspects, though. I don't know if you've noticed, but with Lisa, and Nikolett, and the other girls I dated back at Hogwarts I am pretty shit at personal relationships."

"I've noticed over the years, yes," Hermione laughed politely. "I'm honestly not so great at them, myself."

"Victor, Ron, Parvati and Hannah - yeah, I've noticed it about you, too. Anyway, come on." Annabelle pushed off the wall and headed for the door. Hermione followed after her in silence, her shoulders thrown back and her face a crude mask of inscrutability.

Immediately they were blasted with all sorts of commotion: the clinking of glasses, raucous laughter, thumping fists and boots, a dozen different conversations, and a hectic piano tune being played by a beholder. Beholders are floating, spheroid creatures; they are essentially floating heads. They have purple skin, gaping mouths of sharp teeth, a single cylcops eye in the forehead, and ten tentacles sprouting from their bodies that each have a smaller eye at the ends of them. Being the only one in the inn with the capability of seeing in all directions at once, the beholder was the only one with the confidence enough to play the piano for the patrons with their back turned.

Annabelle crossed the inn, her head on a swivel as her eyes searched out anyone familiar. She dropped to her hands and knees next to a table of rowdy orcs, looking briefly between their strong, fight-scarred legs before straightening again. She repeated this at a few different tables, earning looks and murmurs. Finally she turned her head up and searched the ceiling. It was there that she found a familiar face. "Gertrude!" Annabelle called, striding over to the corner, neck craned and with a smile on her face.

Gertrude uncurled her body, took one look at Annabelle, and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. She spider-walked her way up to Annabelle, then rose to her feet into a proper, hag hunched posture. She stood there, stooped over, her blackened skin charred and scarred as ever. Even standing with her legs locked, Gertrude only came up to about Annabelle's waist - something of note, because Annabelle was an incredibly _short_ woman herself due to stunted childhood growth. Gertrude's figure was the living embodiment of the phrase "skin and bones." Her dark robes hung off her in tatters - a deliberate choice of fashion, Annabelle knew it to be. Gertrude gave Annabelle a smile that brightened up her deformed face, and moved to grab her wrists with clawed fingers. She pulled Annabelle in, down to her knees, and put her face in close. So close that their noses nearly were touching.

"You came back!" Gertrude rasped. Her voice was as deep and throaty as Annabelle remembered. "I've never seen the same human back in here twice, and I have lived goddammit! But you...everything you told me that night was true, wasn't it?"

"Mhm," Annabelle nodded, not drawing away in the least. She held her awkward posture just as it was. She felt the claws digging into her arms; she didn't flinch at it. "I'll tell you again if you need me to: I enjoyed meeting you, and I enjoyed the time we spent together. I'm not like most humans."

"Hmmm..." Gertrude hummed thoughtfully. She let Annabelle go and whipped her head around to stare up at Hermione, who startled and shifted where she stood under Gertrude's sudden and intense gaze. "And is this another not-like-most-humans human you've brought to me?"

"Her name is Hermione - and, yes," Annabelle introduced. "Hermione, this is Gertrude." Annabelle drew her wand and flicked it at a table nearby, and it slid across the floor toward them (the chairs included). Hermione was the first to take her seat. Annabelle dragged her chair around to sit directly opposite Hermione. Gertrude looked between them, and climbed up onto the table and settled down on her knees facing Annabelle - presenting her back to a _very_ offended Hermione. Annabelle leaned around Gertrude and gave her friend a certain _look_ , and then Hermione's twisted expression had gone, and she had settled herself back in her chair with crossed arms.

"Have you had anything to eat tonight?" Annabelle asked Gertrude, giving her a warm smile.

"I took a bird a few hours ago," said Gertrude, licking her lips at the memory. "It was smaller than I'm used to, but I can't be a picky eater, can I?"

"Here - why don't I treat you." Annabelle conjured a large stone in the air, which she transfigured it into a chicken - and then immediately she struck it with a fatal curse. Gertrude pounced, seizing the chicken and burying her face in its feathery body. Her pure black eyes shone with gratitude as she took to her meal with messy hunger. Behind Gertrude, Hermione was making these little choked noises. Annabelle shot her another _look_ , along with a horrible hand gesture that caused Hermione's jaw to drop (Gertrude noticed none of this byplay on their part, so consumed with her food was she).

"Want any seasoning with that?" Annabelle said, returning her focus to Gertrude. Gertrude paused, nodded, and reluctantly dropped the mangled, bloody, smelly chicken into her lap. Annabelle pushed her chair back and stalked over to the table of orcs. They were absolutely massive, brawny, and decorated with glowing jewelry - earrings and necklaces and bracelets, along with little pendants pinned to their oversized robes. Annabelle got right up to the table and slammed her fists right down in the middle of their board game (quite a popular one in their society, called ket'chna), scattering more than a few pieces. All four of the orcs looked at her with...nothing more than mild surprise and a dash of amusement.

"Seasoning. Give. Now," Annabelle said loudly, leaning forward and locking eyes with the orc sitting directly across from her. The orc looked at zir fellows, then back at her. They stared at one another like this for five seconds straight, then the orc let out a little chortle and tossed the seasoning shaker at her. She left them to their game for her own table, not giving them another word or look.

"You said not to talk to anyone or do anything with anyone!" Hermione burst out, as Annabelle dropped into her chair again. "What was _that?!_ And what was with you when we first came in? You were bothering _everyone_! You could have- you could have been-"

"Unless you can take on everyone currently in the place," Annabelle quoted herself calmly to Hermione, interrupting her rant.

Hermione froze. Stared. Her eyes went wide with disbelief, and her lips twisted into something that conveyed outrage and a hint of disgust. "What the- what the _hell,_ Annabelle! Only a few months out of Hogwarts, _and_ _your head is already_ _so far up your own ass that you honestly believe you could solo the patronage of an entire, disreputable inn?!_ "

"Are you calling my _home_ disreputable?" Gertrude spoke, whirling around on the table to face Hermione, her dark, stringy hair flying everywhere.

"She didn't mean it, she's just upset with me," Annabelle told Gertrude. Then, to Hermione she said: "Yes."

"Prove it," Hermione said smugly, a gleam of triumph in her deep brown eyes. Of course, she seemed to have forgotten just who she was talking to.

Annabelle stood up again. "Okay."

"Oh, we're doing this again?" Gertrude asked, her face lighting up with excitement.

"WHAT?!" Hermione screeched, turning on Gertrude with shock. "She did this before? Annabelle, no, _don't you dare!_ "

Annabelle slid her coat off and hung it on her chair, then pointed her wand at her own head and sliced her hair off into a crude, short cut with uneven fringe long enough to cover her eyes - she trimmed this off with a very precise, final casting. She thrust her wand at Hermione, sending her flying back into the corner; and with a flourish she erected a half dozen protective barriers around the corner, causing Hermione to vanish from sight, and her outraged cries to fall silent, even to Annabelle herself.

Everyone in the inn was looking at Annabelle by now. Most were still seated, but even those that were looked _suitably tense. "_ Anyone who doesn't want a part in this: you have five seconds to get out." No one moved; the table of orcs erupted into guffaws, and they shook their heads at her like she had just done something embarrassing. Regardless of the orc's opinions on her, Annabelle waited the five seconds out - waited for Anju to jump off her table and disappear up the stairs. Then, she twirled her wand over her head and sent a volley of purple magical fireballs right at the orcs. Even with their natural magical resistance and their formidable size, the fireballs did their work on the orcs; their table exploded, and the four were knocked back out of their chairs. Patches of purple fire stuck to and ate away at the orcs like a fast acid, and their astounding, innate regeneration abilities kicked in immediately to try and counter it.

That was the point at which all hell broke loose.

A pale-skinned teenage boy hopped off a bar stool, turned into a bat and flew right for Annabelle; he blew past her with a screech, and raked her across the face with magically enhanced talons that were six inches long and made of sharpest steel. She whirled around and created a stringy sphere like a spiderweb around the vampire bat, trapping him in mid air. One of the orcs had done away with her fire magic, and ze came running at Annabelle with absolutely enormous twin sickles, whose blades were burning with a blue fire of their own. Clearly, ze intended to return the favor to her.

Annabelle flicked her wand and caused the floor between her and the orc to bubble. The orc's momentum took zir over the bubbling floor, and then they began to sink down into it like quicksand. The more ze struggled, the faster the floor pulled zir under. Annabelle turned her wand on the other orcs, preparing to cast powerful Cutting Curses on their legs - but something stopped her dead. Something stopped _everyone_. A great and high wailing echoed throughout the inn, and the overwhelming power within the sound had caused every single person to be literally paralyzed. It was instant, and there was no fighting it. Annabelle couldn't muster up even a single thought for a nonverbal spell - her very _mind_ had been paralyzed as well, it seemed like. Her whole physical and even mental being had been locked up. The wailing continued, turning even higher pitched and morphing into an aggressive shriek; everyone found themselves falling to their knees, and then flat on their faces. No one could resist, not even with a twitch of an eye or a movement of the mouth.

After a minute that could have been an eternity, the shrieking faded, and silence befell the inn.

Everyone got to their feet, and everyone suddenly had eyes only for the barkeeper. She would have looked perfectly human, were it not for the gray skin, the waist-length white hair that almost had a glow to it, and the eyes. The eyes were a bright silver, and they seemed to be trying to draw Annabelle in as much as repulse her - or maybe it was _because she knew_ they were trying to pull her in that she also felt like she had to stay away. In any case, the barkeeper's silver gaze locked onto Annabelle alone.

"Enough," the barkeeper spoke, in a voice of melody that had Annabelle's stomach fluttering inside. "Do you humans really have such short memories? Do you _really_ not remember that you've already proven yourself worthy of being here among us - not just that we let you _pass through here, but that we actually decided to welcome you here freely!_ Here, in the one place _where we can all feel safe and comfortable with ourselves!_ Or is it not a problem of your memory, _human_? Is it just _that you're human_? Do you just have this need inside of you to hurt us, to beat us down and lord your superiority over us all? Is _that_ the great mystery solved of why all of us are raped, tortured, and kept away from the largest of your population centers, and everything you've built and made there? Is that why we're all here, living in these wild lands, these forests and these _nowhere places?_ Is it just innate with you people, an irresistible urge to cause us as much misery and pain and loneliness as you can?"

"I wasn't proving myself to you," Annabelle spoke calmly, getting to her feet and slipping her wand into her pocket.

"No, you were proving yourself to the _other human you brought here this time_ ," the barkeeper retorted, her beautiful face twisting into ugliness as she glanced at Hermione in the corner - the protective barriers had been torn down by the barkeeper's screams. "How many will it be next time? Five? Ten? A dozen? Twenty? Do you intend to just keep taking advantage of the hospitality and the _trust_ that we provided you - _you, a human_ \- to bring more and more of your kind here until you can overwhelm us? Has that been your goal since first visit? Is this your collective species final efforts at just doing away with us? Sweeping us under the rugs? Have you just grown _bored with us_ here in our captivity at long last?"

"Do you think a _human_ would do what she did for Anju, no hesitating and no turning her nose up about it, if she wasn't different?" These words came from Gertrude, loud and in her trademark raspy tones. But in there was also anger, and defensiveness as she stared down the barkeeper. "Do you think she could sit at a table with me like she did, and _fuck me like she did_ if she wasn't _different?_ "

"Well, we weren't all there to witness that last one, now were we?" the barkeeper responded, easily and with pure scorn. "But don't worry: we all understand that you're a bit more desperate than the rest of us for a little love and affection."

"She sat with Anju for _hours,_ just listening to her, the last time she was here," said Gertrude, stamping a foot. "What normal human would do that? Be so kind, so caring?"

"She was probably laughing on the inside," said the barkeeper, dismissive. "Hell, she was probably doing what she did to Anju out of some _fetish._ You know how much humans love doing that. We're just _objects,_ abstract _ideas_ to them. We're not people to them, Gertrude! She was probably _fetishizing you_ , _too!_ Just so she can go back to her grand cities and tell all her people that she actually screwed one of _your_ people."

"She wouldn't do that!" Gertrude yelled, and she bared her claws plainly. "So shut up, Teafa. Just shut up about her, about someone you don't understand, when _she's the only one of them giving a damn about all of us! The only one trying to help us!"_

"Evidence of that boredom," Teafa snarled. She leapt over the bar counter and balled her fists at her sides. "A human so bored of hurting us that she decides on her own whim to play around with us, and get us all worked up enough to _actively_ go against her people! What a truly inspired, new kind of game she came up with!"

"She's close friends with a reawakened _dragon_!" Gertrude said, refusing to back down. "I've heard rumors from Romania that she's even convinced the magical government there to monitor and aid any others who've been waking up again these past few years!"

"No," Teafa said. "She _rides a dragon._ Like a _pet,_ a _steed, a common beast_. Considering that she's already sexually satisfied herself with yourself and Anju, _simply for what you are_ , I wouldn't be surprised at all if she _gets off on_ riding that poor dragon around everywhere. Does she command her to pleasure her? Does she strike her with curses every time she disobeys, every time she refuses to be _mounted again?_ We have no idea how this human treats her when they're not in public, or out on open sky where everyone can watch them!"

"I'm leaving," Annabelle spoke, voice devoid of even a trace of emotion. As for her heart and head...well, hearing that sort of talk about Norberta was causing her to struggle to contain it all for much longer. She looked to Hermione, who was pale and scared in her little corner. "Come on, Hermione." Hermione quickly ran across the inn and blew out the door far ahead of Annabelle.

"I'm leaving too," said Gertrude, letting her claws relax.

"If you leave here with that _human,_ I'm not letting you back in," Teafa told her coldly. "If you try and sneak your way in, I'll scream loud enough to blow your head off - and you of all people know that I'm not exaggerating here."

Gertrude froze up. She looked at Annabelle, then at Teafa. "You- you can't just throw me out like that! This is- this is- _this has been my home for the past twelve years!_ I won't have anywhere else to go!"

"You can come stay at my village," a sharp, fierce voice spoke up. Anju had just come gliding down the stairs, by power of her wings and her magic. "I know that right now it consists of only myself and dozens of empty huts, but that will change after my children grow up, and my people come back stronger than ever."

"Take her in, then," Teafa hissed at Anju, her gorgeous, deadly mouth working furiously. "Be together with your tainted selves, share in raising those filthy human half-breeds with one another, I don't care. Just don't come back here - either of you. I can't stomach the sight of you any longer."

"I will leave, as well." This proclamation came from one of the orcs - the one with the sickles. The one who had passed on the seasoning to Annabelle back at their table. Ze turned a stony face and strong eyes on Annabelle and added, "You have spirit, a surprising knowledge of my people's ways - and I still need to fight you properly."

"All of you weaklings get out!" Teafa screamed, anguish lacing her musical tones. "You- you weak, pathetic traitors! A human walks in here once, says a few things, fucks a few of you, and you're willing to just follow along behind her like a pack of starving animals! Just one human, one conversation and you're willing to forget _thousands of years of torture, rape, murders, zero rights or consideration, no respect whatsoever, and dozens of acts of attempted - and even successful - genocide?!_ "

"She treats me like a person," Gertrude said quietly. "And she's never done any of those terrible things to me. I know she's the first human I've ever actually known - I don't have as much experience with them as you do - but as far as first impressions go, she's made a really good one."

"Get. Out," Teafa gritted.

Gertrude limped over to Annabelle, grabbed her wrist, and started off for the exit; Anju followed after, taking up a slow shuffle on her talons; and trailing along at the rear came the orc, zir sickles in hand like ze expected to be blindsided by Teafa at any moment. But they made it out of the inn without incident.

Cold night air washed over them. The ocean rapids slammed against the base of the cliffside far below.

Hermione was sitting less than ten feet from the cliff's edge, her knees pulled up to her chest and her chin resting atop them. Annabelle dropped to the grass next to her and adopted the very same posture. Anju and the orc remained standing, a little apart from Annabelle - but Gertrude fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around Annabelle's neck, and buried her head in her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Annabelle whispered. "I am sorry for taking away your safe haven, your _home_."

"I'm not," Gertrude responded, even though her inflection seemed to suggest otherwise. Her raspy voice was quavering, soft and uncertain. "Teafa couldn't give you a chance - give your people a chance - because she's suffered because of them. Suffered worse than most of us have. Some of us haven't even suffered at all at your hands, and she hates those ones of us almost as much as she hates humans. Hatred is as bad for us to hold inside of us as it is for the humans to hold against us, I think. The hate is the worst of all this. It doesn't help any of it, any of us."

"I, Oguk of clan Shelor, declare that I have never suffered at the hands of a human," spoke the orc, proud and loud. "And I do not know of any in my clan that has, either. Most of my kind stands proud and apart from humankind, and we have done so for as long as we have memory and history. I do not know and I do not understand where all Teafa's rage comes from. I do not understand how it can blind her so. So much that she would make us outcasts of the Bloody Spade Inn." Ze crouched down and lay a strong, large hand on Annabelle's shoulder. "I saw nothing in you but respect and compassion - two things that my people hold above all else. Above all laws, any rules, and every word that could ever be spoken. I believe that your cause is true, and a righteous one, and I would be willing to support you in it however I can, if you continue to prove that respect and that compassion to me going forward."

"How wonderfully touching this little moment is - but alas, I'll have to interrupt it."

Annabelle, Hermione, Gertrude, and Oguk all turned to see an unfamiliar figure approaching them in the dark. It was a human, a man, perhaps a solid decade older than Annabelle and Hermione. This man had wild, shoulder-length dark hair and eyes a cheerfully light blue. He was freshly shaven, and his lips were curved into a humorous sort of smile. He was clad in heavy boots, and he wore a presentable button-up dress shirt and pants, with a thick, illustrious fur overcoat that trailed the grass and made sounds like a slithering serpent. His belt had several pouches, and shoved down in the belt itself were two different wands, a small dagger, a modern american handgun, and a wallet secured by a simple string. On his head sat an almost comically large-brimmed hat that looked to be straight out of the seventeen-hundreds.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Annabelle spoke, getting to her feet and turning to face the stranger head-on.

"Adelyn, please," spoke the stranger, sweeping _her_ hat off her head and turning it into a bow in one smooth motion. "Adelyn...hmmm, let's go with Barnes, why don't we? I'm feeling like a _Barnes_ this evening."

"Okay," Annabelle said blandly, feeling severely thrown off by this stranger - this Adelyn woman. "Adelyn Barnes, Ms. Barnes? Why are you here? Or, to be more specific - and please don't take this as my being rude - why are you here _talking to us_?"

"Worry not for the rudeness, Ms. Potter," Adelyn waved off her words - literally, with a sweeping hand and a quick smile. "Your question is one easily answered: I stand before you now to ask if I might join you in your... _momentous_ crusade."

"You have a real flair for the dramatics there, Ms. Barnes," Annabelle replied - not her finest response ever. But she was still feeling so - so off-kilter. What was it about this woman? It wasn't danger, not a gut warning of a threat. That wasn't it. She'd felt that before, and _this wasn't it._ So what was this? She couldn't ever recall feeling this way before in her life. Why...?

"Oh, no, no - I'm just quite dedicated to the part," Adelyn said, shaking her head and chuckling to herself. "And, of course, I find that it helps to get me through the dragging days to add a dash of my own brand of _excitement_ to life."

"Are you a vampire?" Hermione said, speaking for the first time in an actual long while.

"Oh?" Adelyn breathed, eyes widening in surprise. "You _are_ a perceptive one, aren't you? Do tell me, please, what was it that tipped you off as to my true disposition?" she went on, spreading her arms wide and tilting her head to one side.

"Well," Hermione began, taking the invitation without hesitation; Annabelle resisted the urge to groan. "your visible skin tone is off - not by much, and only in very small, nearly imperceptible patches along the neck - which would suggest a very _excellently done,_ but ultimately imperfect transfiguration of the the skin alone. Very advanced, very dangerous - you must be incredibly talented to have pulled it off without causing any life-threatening reactions by your body - and not many people would have reason to ever even attempt such a thing unless it was seen as absolutely necessary...like a vampire trying her best to fit in. The second clue for me was the outfit and the attitude; it's all very, oh, could we say _Shakespearean_?" Hermione tried for a grin. "I'd thought you either had to be a vampire, or a traveling dramatic actor- _actress_ , that is - I'm so sorry! And you said it was to help you get through dragging days, to add excitement, and, well, I'm highly knowledgeable about vampires, and I know you can't eat or sleep, and that physical contact just causes a numbing sensation, and that-" Hermione cut herself off quickly, dropping her head for a moment. "Anyway, there were a few other clues too, but the most important one I think was...well, your eyes," she finished, rushed and flushing with mortification and remorse at her slip-up.

"My...eyes?" Adelyn said slowly, her entire act dropping for the first time, for a brief moment. Then she laughed, doubling over and slapping at her knees, and it was back. She smiled widely, extended a hand to Hermione like she was going to ask her to dance. "I would have to ask that you explain that one to me, Ms. Granger."

"They're - they're old eyes," Hermione struggled to say. "There's weariness, loneliness, pain and loss, and...and it's all a lot more than I've ever seen in anyone before. You've lived longer than most - longer than any normal human, any normal mage."

"Indeed," Adelyn answered, her voice a low, throaty growl. She wandered off to the left, passing in front of them all, then she turned and stepped right up to the edge of the cliff. One more step and she would go over. She raised her arms and tilted her head back, letting her hair whip in the winds. "Oh, the life I've lived...longer than you could ever comprehend..." She looked over her shoulder, taking them all in with narrowed eyes. Her lips were curved downward. "A life of misfortune, curses and tragedies untold. Indeed, agonies inexpressible by these lips of mine. But alas, such is the fate of a vampire. Doomed are we to eternally experience the worst this world has to offer. Would there were a way to expedite the process, I would gladly proceed toward a death. Any death at all. Yet I continue onward, for I am immortal. Forever young, yet forbidden by fate itself to do anything good and positive with said youth."

"Maybe, maybe not," said Annabelle, carefully stepping up next to Adelyn. She delicately touched the woman's arm. "If you want to join the movement, no one's going to refuse you - it's not like it's some exclusive club."

Adelyn's frown turned to a small smile; she looked down at Annabelle's hand on her arm, and stepped back from the ledge. "Thank you, Ms. Potter. It does me good to be invited so - and I accept. Those open arms of yours are truly remarkable. Oh, I feel so warm inside!" She cocked her head and threw Hermione a sly little grin. Hermione responded with a half-hearted smile and an ashamed duck of the head.

"Excuse me, but I need to get back to my village and see to my eggs," Anju spoke up. She cast a sidelong look at Gertrude. "If others would care to join me...?"

"Of course - go," Annabelle said kindly. She drew her wand and her mirrortalker, and tapped it twice; two duplicates burst out of it like a dividing cell. "I want you to have these, in case you ever need or want to get in touch with me again," she explained, handing one to Anju and Gertrude, and the other to Oguk. "Just look into these mirrors and say my name when you want to talk to me. I'll always have mine on me, or at least nearby."

"I will see you again soon, I hope?" Oguk inquired of Annabelle. "We still need to fight."

"You'll get that fight," Annabelle assured zir. "But for now, Hermione and I-"

"Ah, 'Hermione and I, and Adelyn,'" Adelyn cut Annabelle off, perfectly and instantly mimicking her inflection and even her pitch. She threw up her hands and smirked. "For I shall accompany you for the foreseeable future, if you are to allow it," she added, in a mock-innocent little voice.

"Right," Annabelle said, that feeling of being _thrown_ coming back. "The three of us will be heading to North America to look into the whereabouts of a friend of ours - of myself and Hermione, that is."

"Well, not a friend," Hermione put in immediately, scowling. "More like...this person that we know who's not really in our lives at all anymore, but when she was we weren't exactly happy to be spending time with her, but we still feel obligated to go and see to her safety because-"

"Okay, _my friend,_ " Annabelle cut across, exasperation seeping out of her. "No one else's. Just. _Mine._ " She looked to Oguk, Anju and Gertrude. "It was nice meeting you and talking with you - some of you again. Thank you for pledging yourselves to the movement, early as it is right now."

Oguk gave a simple nod, then sat on the grass cross-legged and shut zir eyes. There was a moment of silence, and then ze faded away into thin air with a sweeping wave of blue particles, that started from the top of zir head and went down to zir bottom.

Anju smiled a fierce raptor smile at Gertrude. "We will go now, too."

"I can't do that," Gertrude said, staring in amazement at the empty spot of grass where Oguk had just been.

"You won't have to," said Anju. She flapped her wings mightily, hovered in the air, then she swooped down on Gertrude and snatched her up in her talons, gripping her by her upper arms. Another several, large flaps and Anju was soaring out over the ocean with her passenger. She banked wide and came back toward the cliffs. She swept right over Annabelle's head and continued on into the distance of inland, in the direction of her village.

Annabelle looked to Hermione and Adelyn, and she couldn't help the smile that came over her then. "All right, if you two are ready to go, we can go too."

"I assume you'll need a hand for this?" Adelyn said, offering hers to Annabelle with another of her little flourishes.

"Have you never apparated before?" Hermione asked, shocked. She slipped her hand into Annabelle's.

"Vampire's life," said Adelyn, with a helpless shrug. "In my witching days, I never quite got around to learning it, and once I became a vampire I lost the ability completely."

"Right," Annabelle nodded, taking Adelyn's hand. "It's an uncomfortable sensation, and it's a bit frightening when the world goes dark, but it's totally harmless as long as you don't move. That's an important thing about apparating: never make any unnecessary movements while in mid-apparition. You can lose body parts and even end up dead."

"Noted," Adelyn said earnestly.

Annabelle counted to three, and apparated.

* * *

 _ **DoubleTree Hotel, NYC**_

* * *

"I am just _truly_ sorry to impose such additional monetary hardships upon you. I've never never wished in all my life to be such an absolute _burden_ \- or a parasite, I suppose, if we are to be more accurate here."

"It's fine, Adelyn," Annabelle spoke as she fell back onto her bed. "Just fine. The third person charges aren't too terrible, actually; they'll barely make a dent in my vault's nonmagic funds."

"Oh, how I could only imagine..." Adelyn's voice called into the bedroom as she wandered off into the suite's beautiful sitting room (two sofas and a television, and an amazing window view of the city). "What _wealth you must have,_ being The Girl Who Lived! Historic, fabled, heroic! Yes, you must indeed be _quite_ well off. Of course, I do wonder," Adelyn continued, her voice rising, and adopting a sly undertone. "if could even _you_ imagine the wealth one might be able to accumulate if they were to, say, live three a thousand years of life, and live that thousand years without any need whatsoever to eat, drink, or sleep."

Annabelle sat upright as Adelyn strolled back into the room with a grin on her face that was the very picture of smugness. "Adelyn," she started, calmly as she could. "did you let me pay for you here when you could have just gotten your own room?"

"Well..." Adelyn set a hand on her hip and tipped her head back. "when you say it like that it doesn't sound all too kind, does it? But my concern was not monetary - it was group safety. Precisely the point that were we to room floors apart, we would leave ourselves both open to being assaulted and perhaps even abducted, and it would happen in such a way that the other might not discover it for hours. But of course, if you would feel more comfortable with my having my own room, I do believe the presidential suite would be to my satisfaction..."

"All right, exactly how rich _are you?!_ " Hermione exclaimed from her bed, staring.

"At least three centuries of nonstop working, investing, and saving up rich," Adelyn answered casually. "If ever you would like, I could invite you to tour my private island - you could stay with me in my mansion home, even," she added, with a wide smile that seemed entirely innocent.

"You must be a billionaire," Annabelle said.

Adelyn raised a finger. "Trillionaire, actually; I have been for quite some time now, and I'm still counting up."

"Dear lord," Hermione muttered, shaking her head in disbelief.

"Yes, well, should you be so unfortunate as to live as long as I have, I think you'll find that even all the money in the world cannot bring you everything that matters," Adelyn sighed. No theatrics in this. Just weariness, just sorrow. Bitterness, too. She leaned against the dresser and shut her eyes. "In my very long, very _detached_ existence I've lost several families I made the mistake of starting in the first place. Only one was due to old age - and that one was my happiest, my most...favored, if you can have a favorite family at all. As for all the others, they were taken from me by the vampire's curse. In one way or another, they were caught in accidents, abducted and tortured, or were murdered in the most random encounters with criminals of all sorts. In some ways, I suppose, you could say I'm like a bad luck charm. Everyone that I ever make the mistake of cherishing, I will lose them sooner rather than later. And everything I touch will quickly come to break, or end up destroyed in some otherwise inexplicable manner."

Adelyn drew in a harsh, ragged breath, and a tear escaped her eyes. "Luckily for me, I have the magic to constantly keep repairing things around me - but unluckily, the same magic rarely allows me to stop the people around me from suffering and dying just for coming close to me; I'm not often fast enough to catch the curse at work, and avert an incident. Which is why, up until a point about twenty years ago, I had spent a solid decade doing my best to stay isolated, solitary as anyone could ever be, because I was just tired of watching this all keep happening after so long of it." She opened her eyes and looked at Annabelle and Hermione, anguish deep within them. "But then, I began to hear about some intriguing new changes in the world - some things brewing, rising - and I thought to myself...give going out into the world another chance, why don't you? Do your best to help it along, contribute as much as you can. Maybe the curse has waned after so long alone. Maybe you can do something good again and not have it crumble before your eyes this time. Just one time. Just once..."

"I think I might know something that could help you with that," Hermione said quietly, suddenly, gazing at Adelyn with total sympathy. "It's a fairly recent potion, only really refined and made available to the public in the last several years, but...it's called Felix Felicis. It's said to bring people good fortune. It's a highly advanced, complicated thing, but it might be capable of counteracting your curse, mightn't it? If your curse is, as you say, something that brings you and those around you a case of _bad luck_?"

"Ahhh," Adelyn sighed, pressing a hand to her chest. "What is this feeling inside me now? Ah yes: hope. Ten years of exile, and I chose to return to the world because of hope. I dared to hope again. And now, I meet you, and you offer me something to even further stoke this fire called hope...Felix Felicis, you say? I've nothing to lose by testing it out, no..." She gave a little hum, thoughtful. "Yes, I'll have to get my hands on a batch of this brew soon," she decided. "Thank you, Ms. Granger."

"Please, call me Hermione."

"And call me Annabelle, if you'd like."

Adelyn smiled at them. "Well, as you both wish."

"On the matter of group safety; you can stay in the room with us," Annabelle informed. "And you don't have to pay your fee, I'll keep handling it."

Adelyn nodded - wiped the tears from her face - and strode from the room very quickly.

* * *

 _ **August 20, 1998**_

* * *

The next day, they had decided to go to the Grand Magi Library of NYC, in hopes of finding information on Felix felicis _and_ on the fairy magic Confiance and her people used, so that they might discover a way to track and contain her properly.

It was during their walk about the city when Adelyn's "bad luck charm" kicked in for the first time for Annabelle and Hermione to witness.

Adelyn moved with speeds faster than that of any average human. She was a blur as she leapt forward and tackled the child, taking him out of harm's way just as the metal beams fell. She got up and brushed herself off. She hastily questioned the boy with, "Are you hurt? No? Good - get back to your parents," and she then continued down the sidewalk like nothing had happened. Her pace was such that Annabelle and Hermione had to nearly run to catch up with her again.

"That was amazing!" Hermione exclaimed, catching Adelyn's arm and giving her a great big smile.

"That time, it was," Adelyn snapped, pulling her arm out of Hermione's grasp and setting off again. Her head was on a swivel again, and her jaw was set. Her every limb was tensed now. She looked over her shoulder at Hermione, not breaking stride. "In past, I've not been so quick. How many children have you watched die because of you? Toddlers? Infants? Newborns in the hospital? No matter where I am, or who I'm around, my curse doesn't discriminate, Ms. Granger! The curse does not _care_ for the innocence or age, or the fact that someone was born without arms or legs, nor for some unfortunate mental illness or intellectual disability that one may have! If they are in close proximity to me, _they will suffer!_ "

"You almost talk like your curse has a will of its own," Annabelle observed. Having witnessed its effects now, firsthand and for the first time, her hand was gripped around her wand inside her coat, and her own gaze had taken up a sweeping vigil of the immediate area. Maybe if there were three magical individuals around who were prepared to counter the effects of the curse...maybe incidents, injuries and fatalities could be prevented at a much higher rate of success than was Adelyn's usual.

"Most days, I'm almost certain that it has to have one," said Adelyn tersely. "Some rudimentary intellect, some minuscule degree of thought - some ability to _choose, to plan._ Some days it's more malevolent than others, you see; some days it kills outright, other times it seems content to simply cripple, maim, or just _inconvenience_. And every day, regardless, I can't afford to stand around and wait and see which one it's going to be."

"Well, let's get to this library as fast as possible, then," said Annabelle.

After a whole hour of researching and discussions with the librarian and his attendants, Annabelle noticed a strange sight. A bird in the window, perched and almost pressing its beak against the glass. She pointed this out to Adelyn and Hermione, and got an unexpected response from Adelyn. Her head whipped around, locking onto the bird instantly.

The raven in the windowsill of the grand magical library cocked its head at them, almost like it was responding to their attentions.

"We need to leave," said Adelyn, her self-transfigured, normalized skin paling deeply. In a way, she looked how Annabelle imagined she would look without it. The look on her face as she gazed at the raven... "Please, let's leave," she said loudly, whirling on Annabelle and seizing her wrist with a grip so tight Annabelle couldn't help but cry out in pain. "I'm serious, Annabelle, do it right now: apparate!"

Annabelle, rather than choosing to stand around and question Adelyn on _why_ she was in such a panicked, terrified state over a raven in the window, chose to apparate, on account of the fact that logically Adelyn would not just be having a near panic attack over a stray bird. She closed her eyes and concentrated on getting back to their hotel room, but she found herself still standing there after reopening them. "Important magical library - anti-apparition charms on the building," she told Adelyn, with a frustrated shake of the head.

"Then throw up some protective enchantments and keep him as far away from us as possible!" Adelyn said quickly. She had released Annabelle, and was now turning to flat-out _run_ through the massive, winding library to the back of the building.

Annabelle gave Hermione a look, and they both obeyed Adelyn without much question; they started off after the panicked woman, throwing up protection spells and barriers every few feet as they navigated the endless, twisting shelves.

"Who is he? The raven - the animagus, right?" Annabelle asked.

Adelyn shook her head, pressing herself to the wall like a cornered animal. "He's my son," she whispered, in a voice filled with horror. "And if he's finally caught up with me, then the odds are my daughter is close by as well. Please, help keep them away from me. Please...dear god, please..."

Minutes passed, and the sounds of spells were heard echoing elsewhere in the great library. More and more frequently they came, and louder and louder. Closer and closer, overlapping footsteps were heard until...

Two teenagers came around the bend - identical in appearance and age (fourteen or fifteen, Annabelle would have guessed), save the differences of sex, demeanor, and clothing. Adelyn's daughter had long, shimmering black hair and olive green eyes - these eyes were narrowed and furious, fixated on Adelyn alone. The girl stood tall, her head raised and her fists balled, her whole attitude one of aggression. Adelyn's son, on the other hand, was standing almost behind the girl, his shoulders slumped, his head bowed, and his skin a sickly pale. On his head was a hat, jammed so far down it almost covered his eyes. He was afraid, he was frail - Annabelle could see it about him.

"Mother," spoke the girl, making that one word alone sound like an accusation and a curse, with the way she spat it out. She curled her lip and took several steps forward, jutting her chest out in pure challenge. She either expected, or actually _wanted_ a fight.

Adelyn, speechless, cast a pleading look at Annabelle; Annabelle quickly raised her wand and threw up another barrier between them and the kids.

"Listen," Annabelle began, cautious and compassionate as she could be. "for your own safety, Adelyn doesn't want either of you two to get any closer than this. She carries a curse inside of her, and this curse is dangerous to everyone in her vicinity. I've seen it myself, and I don't want to see it hurt you two any more than Adelyn does - than your _mother_ does."

"Bullshit," the girl snarled, stalking up to the barrier and slamming a fist to it. " _Bullshit!_ You and that other lady are in there right now with her, and you're just fine!" She pressed her face to the barrier and locked eyes with Adelyn. "We look for you for _years_ , and now we've found you the only excuse you can come up with for never wanting to see us is some kind of doom-and-gloom _curse?_ And you don't even think it's believable enough to spill out at us through your own mouth? You have to have some- some- who even are these people to you? Who are they, that you'd make them say it for you?!"

Adelyn made a choking noise, shook her head. "I- it's not an excuse. It's real, and it's the reason why I left your mother-"

"Before we were even _born!"_ the girl cut across, driving her fist into the barrier a second time; and this time, a blue ripple of energy appeared where her hand made contact. "Mom told us you did that - but never _why._ But whatever reasons you had, she didn't have to lie to us about it, and neither do you - _not_ _when we're right here_! Look, if you just never wanted kids and- and we were a mistake you made, and you didn't want to deal with it, then just get some guts and tell us! It won't make us forgive you, it won't make us any less pissed off with you for abandoning us and mom all these years, but it'll at least be the truth. It'll at least be _something._ Anything but some moronic, _I was cursed so I decided to never see you again to protect you_ thing. That's stupid, lame, fairy tale _bullshit, mother_ , and I'm not having it. Nothing you say or do is going to make you look good to us...so just give us the truth."

"I never thought I would look good to you if this day ever came, no matter what I could say or do," Adelyn admitted, her breath hitching as she held back a sob. "You want the truth from me? This is it. This is all there is: I'm a vampire." She raised a finger and jabbed it against her forehead, and her skin shifted and shimmered, the color draining from it. Her eyes turned black. She bared her teeth, and two long fangs sprouted. "You're school aged, you have to have learned about vampires by now, right? Well I'm a vampire, and I have the vampire's curse. I left your mom when she was still pregnant because I couldn't stay with her, or in your lives once you were to be born, knowing that if I did stick around I'd be giving you all lives of misfortune. Accidents, losses, tragedies, sadness and pain and anger...I couldn't have stayed and given you all that, and ever called myself a good person for it!"

"This is the truth," Adelyn spoke gently, in a trembling voice. "Erika, Jack...this is the truth, this is what you came for, and now you have it, and now I have to ask you to get away from me. Get away, stay away, and go back home and forget you ever found me. I'm not going to watch you two get hurt or killed because of me, so don't make me watch it happen. Please."

Erika didn't move. She didn't speak. Her face fell, and she let her fist slide down the barrier to her side. She stepped back from the barrier, and then she threw herself bodily at it. She slammed into it with her shoulder, again and again, and she screwed up her face and screamed as she did. Adelyn's son, Jack, finally came to life; he raised his arms and directed his palms at the barrier, a look of utter focus on his thin, pale face.

Annabelle watched them work at her barrier, watched them undo every enchantment she had made - and then she watched it fall. The teenagers broke through; Erika moved swiftly toward Adelyn, and when she reached her mother she swung a fist at her. Adelyn could have avoided it, Annabelle knew she could have - had seen her speed before - but she just stood there and took it. She probably felt like she deserved it.

Erika swore, grabbed at her injured hand, but she never looked away from Adelyn. "I don't care," she said, her breath ragged. "Vampire or not, vampire's curse or not, I don't give a damn, _mother - because you're my mother._ We've spent fourteen years looking for you, looking to get answers out of you, and we're not leaving you alone until we know _everything_."

"If you just want to know my history, then I can tell you that," Adelyn said quietly, fearfully averting her gaze from her daughter. "But I'll only tell you over mirrortalker - or telephone, whatever you'd feel most comfortable with. We can talk, if you're really set on it, but please, _please_ , you can't be anywhere near me like this again." She glanced at Annabelle. "Could you give them a mirror, and the number to our hotel room's phone?"

Annabelle nodded; she duplicated a mirror, as she had for her new friends made back in Scotland, and she conjured up a slip of paper with the number to their hotel room on it. She offered mirror and slip out to Erika. Both were snatched up in an instant, and without even a glance at Annabelle's face.

Erika stomped away from her mother and handed the mirror and the paper off to her brother. "Let's go," she told him shortly. With slow movements and a face wincing with pain, Jack followed his sister away.

* * *

The group was just leaving the grand magical library, when a man appeared out of thin air and flashed a wand at them. There wasn't any introduction, no taunting, nothing. Just the attack. It caught them all off guard - except Adelyn.

Adelyn tackled the man and rolled with him into the middle of the intersection. They both jumped to their feet just as a loud horn blared. A truck slammed on its brakes, but it was too late; it hit them both. Adelyn was sent flying, and the man went up over the truck's hood.

"Mom!" Erika made to rush into the streets, but Annabelle caught her with a nonverbal Body-Bind Curse, freezing the girl to the spot.

"Don't come closer!" Adelyn yelled - at all of them. The warning was as much for Annabelle and Hermione as it was for her children.

Annabelle went to apparate the kids away, but she suddenly found herself falling flat on her face due to one of her boots suddenly tightening around her foot. The boot squeezed her foot so hard she felt a loss of circulation, and then there was a _crack_ as her ankle exploded in pain. _Oh. Goddammit, Adelyn._


	6. Taking A Closer Look

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

* * *

"How many people do you have looking for you?!" Annabelle yelled at Adelyn, while pointing her wand at her broken ankle to heal it instantly, allowing her to stand again. "First your kids, now whoever this guy is! Is this going to be a daily occurrence?"

"When one lives a thousand years, one tends to leave an impression on the world - whether one wants to or not!" Adelyn retorted, engaging the assailant. She was going full out with her magic, as was her opponent. Neither of them seemed to have any regard for the nonmagical people who were quickly gathering around them to witness the impossible - one of them, some young university student, had a camera trained on the flashing lights and raging streaks of energy shooting off in all directions. "Whoever this is, I've no idea! Perhaps I slighted an ancestor of his at some point, and now here he is to exact a late revenge upon recognizing me from some old photo!"

"That's _very_ specific, Adelyn!" Hermione yelled, frustration in her voice as she created a wide magical shield to protect as many nonmagical people behind her as possible. "I wonder how many times this exact scenario has happened to you before, I mean _really!_ "

"Oh, I'm in quite a number of photographs - some of them taken during great and historic moments!" Adelyn flourished her wand and sent a parked car flipping sideways across the street; her opponent disapparated, and reappeared safely out of harm's way to cast a deadly curse that looked like purple lightning right back at her. "It's the curious cat in me, you know? I never could resist the urge to personally witness a changing of the guard, a revolution of a time, a first meeting between two _interesting_ peoples, or the formation of an _intriguing_ new nation! I figured _something_ had to keep me occupied over the endless millenium, so why not go and see history in the making? I just _crave_ the unexpected!" She blocked and reflected a flurry of spells from her opponent, and took pause to cast a look at Annabelle and bark out, "By the by, did I _not_ already tell you to get my _fucking_ kids out of the line of fire?"

"I would have-" Annabelle ducked under a curse and threw herself at Erika, grabbing her arm in a not-at-all gentle way. "-if _you_ hadn't stopped me-" She dragged Erika along like a helpless rag doll as she lunged for Jack's arm next. "-in the first place!" Shutting her eyes and focusing as best she could amid all the screams and shooting spells, she disapparated with Adelyn's children. The three of them reappeared in Annabelle's hotel room. Annabelle let them go and stepped away. She took a breath and snapped out a stern, "Don't go anywhere," and then she apparated right back into the chaotic scene of battle.

"If you're a thousand years old, why don't you kill this guy already and be done with it?" Annabelle asked Adelyn as she threw herself forward and joined the duel. "Shouldn't you be-?"

"Some sort of ultimate _badass,_ are you on verge of saying? I haven't spent a thousand years fighting wars, or whatever else you'd imagine from me!" Adelyn gritted her teeth as she took a terrible curse in the leg, that shredded her pants and caused the exposed skin to turn black. Her veins shifted into a deep blue color, and seemed to thrum and pulse violently, casting off light each time they did. "In fact, I've sort of made it a point to live as peacefully as possible, and to stay out of as many conflicts and battlefields as I can! So forgive me for not being an almighty goddess capable of ravaging entire armies with a flick of my finger!"

"Would you two grab whoever this is and just take them somewhere more private, please?!" Hermione shouted urgently, as a lamppost began to move and twist like a serpent, sweeping left and right, dealing horrific blunt force trauma to nearby people. "I don't care _where_ you go, just _get out of the goddamn city, would you?_ "

"Okay!" Annabelle acknowledged. She glanced at Adelyn and gave her a nod, then she apparated directly behind their attacker. She grabbed the man in a choke-hold, and apparated. At the very moment of apparition, two things happened: the man she was holding twisted an arm and jabbed his wand into her stomach, and Adelyn came flying forward with her enhanced speed to grab his shoulders and drive a knee into his gut.

The three of them disapparated, and they all reappeared deep in the swamp forest where Annabelle had first reunited with Norberta here in the States.

"Smart move!" the man finally spoke to them, gasping from Adelyn's blow to his stomach. He cast a quick, nonverbal curse that sent Annabelle flying backwards a dozen feet, and then he was engaged with Adelyn exclusively - again. Annabelle felt every muscle in her midsection start to vibrate, and then they felt like they were snapping, one by one. She thrashed and screamed in the swamp waters as she realized that, oh god yes, they were _very literally snapping_. "I should have thought of it, myself, but you know, orders are orders!"

"What the _hell_ are you on about?!" Annabelle screamed, trying to sit up through the agony - and falling back to the dirty water with a splash as a result. From stomach to back, all of those muscles had been snapped in two by this point, putting her into a very targeted sort of paralysis. Resigning herself to laying there, she thrust her wand out at the furious combatants and cast a charm on the man's clothes; his robes began exuding a hissing acid that poured down him like a waterfall. The man reacted instantly, magically reversing the charm and vanishing his robes and the acid away inside of a second. Another second, and he had healed himself of truly horrific wounds, and gone right back to fighting Adelyn. That was the point at which Annabelle realized that both she and Adelyn were really, _really_ out of their league.

"Do you want to tell us who you are? Why you're here? Give us some answers before you kill us?" Annabelle called out, letting her wand hand drop down and disappear under the water - there was really nothing she was going to be able to do here.

The man, deprived of concealing robes, was revealed to Annabelle to be...a very _fit_ young man around her own age - he had an eight pack, she couldn't help but note, when his simple black shirt rode up during a dodge. Long dark hair, green eyes that were a lighter shade than even her own, and a nose that was a bit off center, like he had taken a hard punch and then never bothered to magically fix the damage.

 _Oh,_ Annabelle thought, her mind blanking out on her for just a _second_. Then she cast a Cutting Curse, almost on a whim; both Adelyn and the man threw themselves out of the way before springing back at each other again.

"You could have hit your friend with that!" the man shouted at her, sounding genuinely shocked, and _indignant_ on Adelyn's behalf.

"Yeah, okay, good point, _but_ \- and try to listen to me on this one - who the hell are you again?" Annabelle retorted, shaking her head to get swamp water out of her ears.

"Well, if you're going to just keep being annoying and _asking_ \- the name is Kyle - and now, if we can all agree to lower our wands, I'll be happy to talk things out with you two!"

"If you're serious, then you first," Adelyn spoke, even as she redirected a recognizable Blasting Curse up into the sky.

"You outnumber me!" Kyle refuted, gritting his teeth and dodging out of the way of Adelyn's returning volley. "What assurance do I have that the moment I let my wand drop, the two of you won't hit me from both sides?"

"You're the assassin here, you don't get to whine about unfair play," Annabelle argued. "So: you first!"

"I'm not an assassin, I'm- oh, all right, all right! Three, two, one..." True to the truce, Kyle immediately stopped fighting, and even took several steps back until he made contact with a tree. "See? I can keep my word. Now I just hope the two of you can keep yours."

Adelyn slid her wand into her belt, then pulled her firearm from its holster. She waved it at Kyle with her usual dramatic flair, and sloshed through the swamp water over to Annabelle's side. "With my speed, I can guarantee you I can put one of these bullets in your head before you can get a shield up _or_ apparate away - just something to keep in mind while we have our little chat, yes? A little bit of _insurance_ for us, seeing as Annabelle here is so wounded. Speaking of which," she added, lowering her eyes to Annabelle's stomach. "let's see what I can do for you, shall we? I do believe I've seen something like this before..."

"You attacked us in the middle of a crowded street while we were just going about our business," Annabelle directed at Kyle, trying to take calming breaths. "How can you call that anything _but_ an assassination attempt?"

"Assassins have to be trying to kill you?" Kyle challenged, with a feeble, friendly grin.

"Is this all a joke to you or something?" Annabelle said, frowning; Kyle's grin slipped off his face immediately.

"No joke," he said seriously. He eyed Adelyn's healing attempts, a conflicted look on his face. "I can fix that," he offered up, hesitant.

"I'd hope so," Annabelle said humorlessly.

"Would you trust me to?" Kyle said, voice quiet. "We're talking things out, remember? If I wanted to keep fighting, I'd have kept fighting," he added, in a voice of pure reason. Annabelle liked reason.

"Okay," she agreed. "Get over here and fix this for me, and let's keep talking." Kyle slowly approached her, dropped to his knees beside her, and then even more slowly reached out and pulled her shirt up to expose her bare stomach. He pointed his wand at the affected area, and a look of total focus came over his face. After a few minutes, Annabelle felt her muscles squirming inside her body, reattaching and healing, slowly but surely. Finally, Kyle sat back and casually slipped his wand into his waistband.

"Alright, you're good to go," he told her, running a hand through sweat-soaked hair and slicking it back. "You might need to take at least a strength potion once a week over the course of the next month, but otherwise...good to go. I think. We'll have to see?"

"That's the most uncertain medical recommendation I've ever heard," Annabelle groaned. She carefully pushed herself up off the ground and straightened up. Immediately her midsection was wracked with intense, burning spasms, and she fell to her knees with a sharp cry. "Shit!"

"Shit," Kyle agreed, shaking his head at her and pulling out his wand again. "Sorry - I must have hit you with that curse a lot harder than I thought I did."

"If we weren't on a truce right now, you could be proud of yourself for that," Annabelle gasped, slamming her fist into the water (and splashing Kyle and Adelyn with murky waters). She lay back down again, flat on her back, and put a hand over her screaming stomach.

"If we weren't on a truce right now, I'd be paying for it," Kyle said, pointing his wand at her and furrowing his eyebrows in concentration again.

"You know you're _shredded_ ," blurted Annabelle, her eyes drifting to the _very_ well-defined stomach that was so close to her now.

"You're not focusing," Kyle murmured, giving her a look that was almost disapproving.

"What am I supposed to be focusing on?" Annabelle responded.

Kyle paused in his work, and looked her full on in the face. "You had questions for me?"

 _Oh, right. I did._ "Why did you attack us?"

"I was ordered to."

"By who?"

"By one of many organizations across the world who have a growing interest in having you on their side."

"How does attacking me make me want to help you?" said Annabelle in confusion.

"That was a test," Kyle refuted, shaking his head at her. "One I didn't agree with; I'm not a fan of collateral."

 _Fucking human illogic,_ Annabelle thought. Out loud she said, "Okay, so you tested me - good for you - now, ask me to join your organization."

"Will you join my organization?"

"No."

Kyle let out an exasperated sigh. "Why not?"

"Collateral."

"I didn't-" Kyle began.

"You're still working for them," Annabelle cut across, calm and collected. "You still did it - 'Orders are orders,' I think you said - so, I refuse. Fix me up, pack up, and head back wherever you came from and tell your _organization_ that I'm not interested."

Kyle's face was swirling with doubt. "The people I work for might not take no for an answer."

"Even more reason not to say yes," Adelyn interrupted, pacing back and forth behind Kyle with firearm in hand - she was ready to push it against the back of his head and execute him at a moment's notice, if he tried to do anything still that would hurt Annabelle.

"More reason you shouldn't be working for them," Annabelle said, catching Kyle's eye and _holding it_. "You don't like collateral, but they told you to take the risk anyway? You come here to test me, and now you're healing me. You seem like a really nice person, a good guy, so...why are you in with a group that seems already to be a really-"

"You should be able to stand now." With a stony look on his face, Kyle put his wand away and stood. "Next time my organization extends an invitation to you, it won't be me."

"Great," Annabelle replied, a rare sarcasm escaping from her brain into her mouth. "I have so many people and groups after me already, what's one more?"

"Mine is one of the most dangerous," Kyle warned. "Look up the definition of the word _mortifer_ the next time you're in a library." He paused, and gave her an odd look. His blank face of a mask vanished for a moment. "If we ever do meet again...don't look at me the way you were this time - it's very uncomfortable." He disapparated almost as soon as those words had finished leaving his mouth.

Adelyn looked at Annabelle; Annabelle looked at a distant tree.

"Sorry," Annabelle said sincerely - but too late to matter now.

* * *

 _ **August 26, 1998 - Black Desert, Utah**_

* * *

"We all did the research, we all came to the same conclusion: This is the place - so let's get inside and see what we can learn about Confiance."

"Ah, perhaps I should take the lead in negotiations, as the risks to me are nonexistent when compared with the risks to the two of you?" Adelyn suggested. Annabelle and Hermione looked at each other.

"I wouldn't want to use you as a human shield," said Hermione, with an earnest shake of her head.

"If you want to take the lead, you can take it," Annabelle said simply.

Adelyn raised an absent hand and gave her hat a tip. "Hermione, how sweet your concern is - yet Annabelle has the right of things; I'm _quite_ the big girl, aren't I? So, shall we proceed?"

"Fucking lava..." Annabelle muttered to herself as she peered into the glowing, hazy, shifting tunnel interior of red and orange. Even she had her limits in life, and walking through a mountain tunnel whose walls were literally molten magma was _really_ pushing her toward that limit.

Adelyn strolled right on in with all her usual swagger, arms swinging carelessly about despite the threat of brushing up with liquid magma. Annabelle followed, but only after applying a static shield charm to her clothes - just in case whatever magic was holding the magma in place decided to spontaneously fail to work, due to a really bad case of _Adelyn_. Hermione took her cue from Annabelle, and cast the same spell on her own outfit, though hers was significantly stronger than Annabelle's.

Even with the shield charms, and even with the fact that the tunnel wasn't filled with smoke and ash, and even _with_ the fact that the heat of proximity wasn't burning them alive because of the tunnel's magic itself...even with all that, it was still way too hot for Annabelle to handle after just a couple minutes of moving along the tunnel. She found herself sweating, her breath catching short, and her head becoming a throbbing mess of dizziness and nausea. Finally reaching a breaking point, she fell to her knees, coughing and holding her head as her body dripped sweat like rainfall.

"Annabelle?" Hermione dropped down next to her, looking only a little bit better than Annabelle felt. "We should...go back..." she heaved. "There's not even any...end in sight, anyway..."

"Trap of the tunnel," Adelyn spoke, striding over to Annabelle and Hermione without a care in the world - she was still entirely unaffected by the environment. She wasn't even sweating (Annabelle wondered whether or not vampires even _could_ sweat). "Perfectly designed to slow down and eventually incapacitate anyone trying to sneak their way into the fortress. At this point, I don't think that going back is an option - you'd likely find it just the same as the way ahead: an endless walk."

"Okay," Annabelle choked, lifting her head as best she could and pulling her hair off her face. "So what do we do now? Are there any spells, anything we could do to get out of this?"

"Perhaps," Adelyn mused, turning her gaze to the ceiling, then shifting on her hips to examine the walls. "If we can't go forward, and we can't go back the way we came, then I suppose we could try breaking out of the trap by way of magical blunt force to the only edges we can see here. Yes, I do think that these walls, this floor we stand on, and the ceiling above all would count as borders of the trap. If we're successful, that should allow us to press on ahead into the fortress proper."

Annabelle nodded. "We'll try that, then." She sucked in a harsh breath and straightened up again. She pointed her wand at herself and vanished away her clothes - including undergarments. She used a charm for generating cool air and directed it over her body, then used the simple Aguamenti spell to get some much-needed water in her.

"Oh, Annabelle. Ego aside, you can be smart when you want to be," Hermione laughed dryly, averting her gaze. Still, she did the same thing in the next moment, though she kept _her_ undergarments on.

"Blasting Curses, then, for this?" Annabelle questioned Adelyn, who had casually seemed to have turned her back to Hermione and her for the foreseeable future.

"I would say that would do it best, yes," Adelyn answered. She pointed her wand at the ceiling, at a point a dozen feet ahead of them. She hesitated, and added, "A quick word of warning: if we happen to fail at punching through the trap completely, we might find ourselves swimming in this magma in an endless tunnel. If we are to do this, we need to breach it in very nearly one shot."

Annabelle walked to stand beside Adelyn, and pointed her wand at precisely the same point that Adelyn was hers. Hermione joined them, swiftly positioning herself to the right of Adelyn.

"On three, shall we?" Adelyn spoke softly. "One...two..." Three voices yelled the same incantation; three simultaneous explosions detonated above their heads. There was a hole ten feet deep and twice that wide where there spells had struck. The magma coating the ceiling and the walls vanished, and the hazy air around them began to crackle and shimmer in a complete rainbow of color. The darkness ahead and behind them in the tunnel popped out of existence, flooding the tunnel with firelight from ahead and daylight from behind. The tunnel itself literally shrunk around them, becoming shorter and shorter, until it was just a very plain, very short corridor of jagged rock and dripping water.

Immediately, from the chamber ahead, there came the stomping footsteps of dozens, and the yells of some very _alarmed_ people.

Annabelle twitched her wand to swathe herself in a thick, hooded black robe, then did the same for Hermione. Annabelle, Hermione and Adelyn all three holstered their wands. Not a few seconds later and the firelight ahead was blocked out by a large and diverse group of Ransus's... _underlings,_ Annabelle thought kindly.

"Hi." Annabelle waved to the greeting party, and took a step forward with all the composure she could muster. "Have any of you seen a fairy fly through here lately?"

A big, dark green ogre (over eight feet tall) lumbered forward with a huge broadsword held easily in one great hand. He could have swung once and cut Annabelle in half at the waist. His pointed ears twitched, and his snout opened wide to show off six underbite fangs - almost a reversal of the vampire's teeth layout. "Confiance," he growled out the name. "Did she steal from you too?"

"A couple years ago, and a few times, yes," Annabelle admitted easily. "But we aren't here to take anything back from her - we just want _her_."

The ogre stared down at her, and then shook his head. "Get in line, humans, because the next time she shows her glitter trail around here she's going to be _ours."_

"Oh, come now," Adelyn began, waltzing past Annabelle and getting right up into the ogre's personal space. "Surely a _great_ fellow such as yourself would be very much open to the idea of a negotiation? After all, what would have you to lose?"

The ogre slowly raised a huge hand, placed his palm on Adelyn's chest, and shoved her back with an offended snort. "Who are _you_ to break into our home, destroy our entrance security measures, and then ask for negotiations to be held?"

"Well, that's-" Adelyn cut herself off, an idle hand raised. She looked to Annabelle and Hermione, then shrugged and lowered her hand as she turned back to the ogre. "That is an _excellent_ question. Who are we? Annabelle, do we even _have_ a name for this rights movement of ours at this point?"

"I'd have thought it was still a bit too early for that," Annabelle responded, frowning to herself. "But, I guess I was wrong on that, if we're finding ourselves needing one already now? Hermione, do you have any ideas for a movement name?"

"Sentient Rights Movement? SRM?" Hermione suggested instantly.

"Simple, but comprehensive," said Adelyn.

"Unless anyone comes up with something better down the line, it'll do," Annabelle decided.

"Enough!" the ogre shouted, glaring at them. "I'll only give you humans one more chance to explain yourselves before I decide to throw you all in a cell, and get the answers out of you in a much less _pleasant_ way!"

"We're just here for Confiance," Annabelle said calmly, tilting her head back to meet the ogre's gaze directly. "And, about why we destroyed your trap - you didn't exactly have a doorbell to ring. But we only did what we had to do to get out of the trap; other than that, I can assure you that we're not going to be any threat, or harm to you, or to anyone else here, or to Ransus. All we want is to be allowed to have an audience with your leader, and to propose a mutually beneficial plan to him."

"Tell me this plan of yours first," the ogre said lowly, staring down at her with a glitter of consideration. "If I judge it to be something the boss would be interested in hearing, then I'll let you tell it to him - but only under guard."

Suddenly, Adelyn broke into soft chuckles. "Have you so little faith in your _esteemed_ and _experienced_ leader that you would believe he could not handle making a little deal with us - and not only that he could not handle it, but that he could not _unless we were_ _under guard_? Do you not trust in his capabilities to defend himself from two soft little humans should it prove necessary? Do you not trust him to judge a plan, approve or disapprove on his own, without your little gatekeeping routine here first? And furthermore, would you really be so _stupid_ as to deprive him of an offer made solely in good faith, from us to him, that would only benefit him? We could have returned to him all his little blades and toys, would only you allow us to-"

The ogre moved toward Adelyn faster than Annabelle would have expected someone of such size to be able to. He picked Adelyn up by the throat like she was a toy doll and slammed her up against the wall. He held her there effortlessly, and he pushed his face close to hers and snarled at her. Adelyn's boots idly swung in the air, as if she didn't mind at all being suspended several feet up off the floor by her neck alone.

"You really need to learn to shut your mouth, human!" the ogre shouted in Adelyn's face. "It will get you into even more trouble than you already are."

"You really do," Annabelle agreed, shaking her head at Adelyn.

"Shut up!" the ogre spat at her. He returned his attentions to Adelyn, and tightened his hold on her neck. "You're lucky today's been a fine day for me, or I wouldn't even be entertaining you all to this point. I would have had you all killed on sight for breaching our fortress, any other time."

Adelyn turned her head as best she could to look at Hermione, a smile on her lips. "Hear that, my dear, _dear_ friend? We'd have been killed on sight, were it any other day! What _luck_! Indeed, should we take this as conclusive proof of the Felicis doing its work on me?"

"Arrrgh!" The ogre whirled around and hurled Adelyn clear across the room - she hit the far wall with a loud _crack_ , and slid to the floor in a heap. "No wonder we've never let any of your kind into our family, if all of you are so _irritating!_ You aren't even _threats_ , oh no, you're just _infuriating_ to even deal with!"

Adelyn rose to her feet in a single, effortless motion that looked to Annabelle as if she had _hovered_. And then she started to laugh again. "Ahhh, but you see, I'm no human: not anymore." Her vampire features revealed themselves, and an amused grin came over her face.

"Not really much better..." the ogre muttered, taking her true form in with a sweeping, up and down look. He sighed, dropped his head, and went on with, "Sorry for the trouble, all the same. I'm Vagirras, by the way. Would you tell me what you're here for? And, while you're here, I'd ask you to keep your human pets under control - tell them to keep that _talking_ to a minimum."

"Human _pets?!_ " Hermione burst out, fury and indignation burning in her eyes. Her lips twisted, and her cheeks paled. " _Excuse me,_ but I'm-"

"Quiet, pet," Adelyn interrupted lazily, shooting her an amused look. "Your behavior has just been _atrocious_ lately, I tell you..."

"Enough," Annabelle spoke up, unable to keep the anger she felt then out of her voice. "Adelyn, really, please shut up - and Hermione, shut up too. I'll talk to everyone, I'll handle this - I'll handle _everything_ and _everyone_ in this goddamn place. Do you hear me?"

"You'll handle _us?_ " Vagirras growled dangerously, lifting his broadsword and taking several threatening steps toward Annabelle. "You humans really should be taught when to keep your tongue!"

Annabelle sighed, and looked to Hermione. "Okay, you were right when you said that trying to make something work here would be wrong for the movement. Let's just go."

"You're not going anywhere!" said Vagirras, raising his sword over his head in preparation for a strike. "You break in here, you demand of us, you insult us, and now you think you can just walk out when you feel like it?"

"Pretty much," Adelyn said, throwing up her hands in a fabulous shrug. "Bye now - won't be seeing you." She sped over to Hermione and took her hand, then dragged her over to Annabelle. Annabelle made to disapparate the three of them from the fortress, but found herself unable to do so.

 _Shit,_ Annabelle thought, raising her wand and preparing for a fight.

* * *

Not an hour after they had returned to their hotel, Hermione approached Annabelle, looking exhausted, sickly, and anxious. Annabelle diverted her attention away from the shiny black shape under the nightstand she had been watching for the past several minutes, and gave Hermione her focus.

"I can't stay with you on this any more," Hermione started, in a shaky tone. Her cheeks flushed, and she seemed to be doing her best to hold Annabelle's gaze. "I can't do it, Annabelle - I don't know how you can. But you can, and you do, and it's amazing, and I admire you for it...but that's _you_. Not me. It's never going to be me. I'm sorry, but if this is the pace you set, hopping all around the globe, and getting yourself into and out of so much trouble with _so many people_ , then it's a pace I'm not going to be able to keep up with. I can't match you, I can't have your back, and all the stress is eating me up inside...so I have to leave. I'm going to go back to Britain, and go back to what I _know_ I can handle." Hermione touched Annabelle's hand, and smiled uncertainly as she added, "But if you ever need research done, or some information, I'll be happy to do my best on that for you in my spare hours."

Annabelle just nodded. "I understand - thank you."

"I'll just go now, then." Hermione waved her wand, gathering her bag and packing her things into it, and then she very promptly disapparated.

Annabelle glanced back at the base of the nightstand, letting out a breath and putting her hands flat on her knees. *I know you're there. Do you want to talk, or do you want us to leave your territory - if it is, and you aren't just exploring?*

The glossy black shape did not emerge from its hiding place. But they did respond to Annabelle's arachnatongue words. *You're the Speaker.*

*Yes, I am,* Annabelle confirmed. *And you are?*

*Listening to you.*

*I meant, do you have a name?*

There was a long silence. *I can't tell you. The other Speaker told me not to.*

*The other Speaker?* Annabelle repeated, grasping her knees tightly. She'd known arachnamouths, like parselmouths and drakemouths, were one in a million, and she had _known_ there had to be others out there like herself, and even had been others before her, but to hear it said to her so clearly...that was something else. It made her _feel_ something else. *Did this other Speaker tell you to hide out in my _territory_ and listen to me, too?*

*Yes,* came the response, calm and measured, with only the barest hint of anxiety.

*Can you tell me why?* Annabelle asked, as calm as she could be, herself; she'd never once _not_ trusted spiders - in fact, for most of her life, they had been the only people she _could_ trust in - but if she was forced to distrust them now, because of some other arachnamouth and whatever it was they had planned for her that required them to enlist spiders to spy on her wherever she went... If that was going to be how things were now, Annabelle wasn't sure how she would handle it.

*No.*

*Okay,* Annabelle sighed. She lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. *You stay under there and you just keep listening to us here, then, okay? I don't mind, for right now. But if someone I know gets hurt because of you, because of what you're relaying back to this other Speaker, I'm going to have to imprison you for a while. Understand?*

*I understand.* There was a note of real fear in their voice now, at the thought of being captured. Caught. Stuck.

Annabelle could relate.


	7. Change The World If You Could

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

* * *

 ** _August 27, 1998_**

* * *

Annabelle woke up in the morning to the sight of something she never would have thought she'd see - not where she was now.

A magi-arachnid, of a species she hadn't met before, was standing at the foot of her bed and staring at her. They were about the size of a _very_ large dog (malamute sized). They were sleek and glossy black, thin and low to the ground, with a streamlined abdomen that tapered off at the end into a faux stinger of sorts.

*Okay...* Annabelle breathed, slowly sitting up and grabbing her wand out from the depths of her pillowcase. She tugged up a little on the waistband of her underwear, pulled down the hem of her long sleeve shirt. *Okay. First off, just so you know, however you got in here, it's dangerous here for you: any nonmagic humans who see you are going to try to kill you right away. They won't understand what or who you are.*

*Trucik knows you're intent on meeting her,* the arachnid spoke. His voice was low, slow, and uneven. *She knows what you want from her, and she's sent me to tell you this: she refuses to be a part of your campaign.*

*All right,* said Annabelle, nodding. _I wasn't expecting a flat out rejection like that - but it is what it is. I'll deal. *_ And...is there anything else she wants me to know?*

*Yes.* His needle-thin mandibles clicked. *The foreign arachnid that came across the _lucar_ bridges made a delicious meal.*

 _Elyrie..._ Annabelle sucked in a deep breath, carefully setting her wand aside. *Thank you for...for informing me of the queen's response. If that's all: Leave.*

The air around the messenger swirled with black smoke, a miniature tornado, and then it cleared away - and the arachnid was gone.

Annabelle waved her wand down at herself, disappearing her sleep clothes and replacing them instantly with fresh day clothes out of her suitcase. She swept her gaze around the room, looking to the high and low corners. She got out of bed and dropped to hands and knees, looking under the furniture. It was under her bed, far back, where she found the particular person she was looking for.

The black widow's distinct red hourglass was starkly visible against her black body. She was staying as far back in the darkness as she could, not moving an inch.

*You,* Annabelle started quietly. *How are you doing today? We don't have any bugs in here for you to eat, as far as I'm aware - if we do, I'm going to have to put that in my review of this place.*

*I'm hungry.*

*I figured.* Annabelle lay down on her side and set her head on a casual arm. *Listen, the other Speaker, did they tell you that you couldn't eat anything while you were spying on me? I can't imagine they did, because what use would a spy be if they died on the job, you know?*

*He told me not to leave the room while you were in it.* A pause. *He made my webbing special: it draws food into it, no matter where it is or what time it is. But I set up my last web somewhere far away, outside your room.*

 _He? That's more than she gave me yesterday about this other Speaker._ Annabelle sighed, her throat clenching tight. Out loud she said, *And you can't leave and go back to it because I'm still here, which means you still have to be here too. I'm sorry. But, hey, did you know that I can make your webbing even more special, myself? I have the same... _abilities_ that this other Speaker does. Why don't you start on a web in here - wherever you think is the best place for you to be without a chance of disturbance - and I'll make it special for you. That way, you can eat without even leaving the room.*

*Why would you help me do something that hurts you?* The spider's tone was nothing but confused.

Annabelle smiled. She let her free arm glide along the floor, reaching casually under the bed. Her fingertips were within three feet of the spider. *Like I told you yesterday: I'm fine with it _as long as it doesn't hurt anyone_. And right now, it's not.*

*All right,* said the spider, her voice pitching deeper, and adopting a _flang_ \- that was shock, and that was...pleasure.

*All right, then,* Annabelle replied, wiggling her fingers. *Come on over here, and I'll make you even more special, girl.*

*Miranwe.* The spider's voice quivered along with her body. *My name's Miranwe.*

*Did you pick it yourself, or is that the name _he_ gave you?* said Annabelle.

*I picked it.* Miranwe hesitated, then she scurried closer to Annabelle's fingers, and climbed up over them and into her palm. Annabelle curled her fingers very, very carefully. *Did you pick _your_ name? Annabelle?*

*No - my mother did.* Annabelle pulled her arm out from under the bed and climbed to her feet. She took up her wand, and pointed it at Miranwe from a distance of several feet - she didn't want to crowd the spider.

*We don't name our children,* Miranwe said, nestling herself in the space between Annabelle's thumb and index finger. *If we live, we get to name ourselves. If we're killed, we don't have to worry about having a name.*

*Makes sense.* Annabelle smiled, and took a moment to touch a gentle fingertip to the top of Miranwe's abdomen. She breathed, and readied her mind for the magic she wanted to make as she steadied her wand. *Now, hold still for this, okay? I promise it won't hurt - but if it _does_ I'm going to want you to tell me.*

*I understand.* Miranwe was silent, and still. And then she spoke up again, very quick, *I don't understand why you touched me. Was that a part of what you're going to do for me?*

*No.* Annabelle laughed, and shook her head. *That was just a show of...let's call it trust, from me to you.*

*What's trust?*

*Miranwe, trust is-* Annabelle stopped. Regathered her thoughts. How to express what she wanted to. *Listen, what I want you to know is that you can be relaxed with me. You can talk to me, you can be around me, and I'm _never_ going to hurt you. That...that's what the touch meant. From me to you. From me to you, Miranwe, I want you to know that when you're with me you're going to be as safe, and as fed and watered as you'd be in your web. Know that I will go out of my way to protect you from harm, in every instance that I can, and know that if you ever have a problem with your web, or with competing species for your food, then you can tell me about it and I will help you to get rid of the problem. And if you ever just want someone to talk to, you can talk to me. That's what trust is, and it exists between two people in a relationship.*

*You would dedicate so much time to just keeping me from being attacked, or from starving?* Miranwe sounded _very_ confused now - and like she thought Annabelle was insane. *Wouldn't you starve, too? Wouldn't you open yourself to being attacked, being out in the open so much, and in places you've never been?*

*Miranwe, compared with you, I can go a _very_ long time without eating. And as for being attacked...I'm capable of killing any other member of any other species that tries.*

*All right,* Miranwe accepted the logic. *You said this trust is between two people in a relationship? Does that mean we have one now? Then should I return your signal of this "trust"? I might not be capable of doing most of those things for you, but I think I can at least show you that you can feel safe around me, too, and that I will help you with any of your problems, and that...what else does trust entail again?*

*That we can have conversations together whenever we feel like it,* Annabelle prompted. *It also entails shows of affection. Appreciation for the other. For the enjoyment or interest you get out of talking with them, or doing activities with and for them.*

*Yes. I'll be here to do that for you, too.*

*If you want to return the signal, go ahead,* said Annabelle, in her softest voice. *However you like, whatever you can come up with to show me that I can trust you too, you just go ahead and do it. I'll acknowledge it.*

*I don't do much thinking - wait.*

And Annabelle waited. She stood there in the middle of her room, gazing down at the glossy little spider in her hand. Not an inch was shifted, not a muscle moved. She was quiet, and she was patient.

Miranwe began to move. She crossed Annabelle's palm, and began to amble up her arm. Slow, careful, and with webbing let loose, she continued on - past the elbow, up over the shoulder. Miranwe stopped there, next to Annabelle's neck.

*Trust,* Miranwe spoke. *I'm not biting you. I'm not injecting venom. I could, here - I can feel your blood going through here, so close to the surface - but I won't. You can trust me. And I'm trusting you too, by putting myself out in the open on you. You could kill me easily and quickly, where I am right now.*

*Yes,* Annabelle agreed. *We have trust, and we have a relationship. And because we do, I'm going to give you another gift. Something that will make it so you'll be capable of killing anything that tries to hurt me. I'm going to make your venom more powerful, more potent, and give you a secondary type of venom. You'll be able to paralyze and kill even people of my size in under five seconds - and you'll have the ability to choose which type of venom to use.*

*All right.*

Annabelle raised the back of her hand to her forehead, and Miranwe crawled onto it without hesitation. She brought her hand down and sat on the bed, and then she aimed her wand at the glossy spider again. She spent the next minute muttering in ancient latin; a brief glow of green light from inside Miranwe signified that the magic had taken effect - Annabelle had successfully pulled it off, and without hurting Miranwe in the least.

*There. Done,* Annabelle said, setting her wand aside. *Now, do you want to go up to a corner and build yourself a web in here? I won't mind, and that way you can feed yourself no matter if I'm in the room or not.*

*Yes,* decided Miranwe, in a voice of flanging pleasure. *I'd like to do that.* She crawled to the edge of Annabelle's hand, attached new webbing, and jumped off. She lowered herself down, further and further, back legs working at her spinneret. On the floor, she scurried over to the nearest wall, and started her way across and up it until she'd found her corner. There, she started on building her web. Annabelle watched her for a good fifteen minutes, watched her work, until Adelyn entered the room with her usual air of casualness.

"So, Hermione's out. Where does that leave you?" said Adelyn, in greeting.

Annabelle shook her head. "I don't know. I'm thinking about- wait, leave _me_?" She looked at Adelyn; the vampire's pale face was stuck in a deep frown, and her scarlet eyes were dimmed. "Are you planning to leave the campaign too?"

"Yes," said Adelyn. Simple. Serious. She leaned against the nearest wall. "With my children back in my life, with everything they've said to me, I've begun to think about some of the others out there I've...let's call it what it is, _abandoned._ I've left a lot of things, people, and places unfinished in my long, long life, Annabelle. And now I...I should really make some rounds, ' round the globe, and finish some of them. For their sakes, not mine; I've hurt, I've left, and I've wronged. And that's _wrong -_ and I'd like to try and make it all right."

"Okay." Annabelle nodded. "If you feel like that's what you want to do, you go do it."

"Well, I'll not be doing it right away." Adelyn grinned. "We can have a few more days together - it's not really a _pressing issue_ , you know? Not like that, anyway. No one that I could go and see right now is in any danger of dying on me before I can." Adelyn frowned, and her scarlet eyes looked down at the floor. One hand went to grip the other arm. "Well, except for one: my son. These past few days, you know I've been having some long conversations over mirrortalker with him and Erika. And it's been during these talks that I learned he has a severe illness. A _terminal_ illness."

"I'm sorry to hear that. If you want to spend time with him-"

Adelyn raised a hand. "Hermione's already left me with a full case of Felix Felicis - it will last me a week - and she's arranged for me to be able to visit her at her home over in Britain, at the start of each subsequent week and over the next three months to pick up more. After those three months are up, however, I'll be finding and hiring on a private potioneer to continue to supply me with it."

"That's good," Annabelle said warmly. "I'm happy you're going to be taken care of in that regard. I'm sure Jack will be too."

Adelyn lifted her gaze from the floor at last. Her frown turned into a small, genuine smile. "He is - as is Erika. They're really quite confusing about the whole matter, though; they seem like they want to be near me, but at the same time they don't really make much effort to...approach me."

"That was before Felicis," said Annabelle. "You did a good job hammering home the point that they'll be crippled or killed for being around you, and they're still holding to that. You're the adult, the parent, though, so you've got to go to them now and tell them it's fine now. That you have it under control. You can't expect them to come to you about it. They don't know what's going on with you, just like you don't know what's going on with them. But that's what you have to fix here. And on that note, have they told you where they've been staying this whole time? Hopefully they aren't doing anything illegal..."

"I couldn't say," Adelyn sighed. "Something I do need to change, you're right. I...I think why I'm having so much trouble and- so much uncertainty about them is because I've never had kids their age before. None of the families I've started before them, none of my children before them, have ever lasted a couple of years. The longest lived children I ever had before them was..." She hesitated. She pulled out her wand and turned it on herself, and over the next minute she self-transfigured herself in a display of mastery beyond anything Annabelle could have imagined; her current masculine body changed, becoming that of a tall, thin blonde woman with freckles and a slightly less pale complexion than her unaltered form.

When she spoke next, it was in a high, soft sort of voice with a bit of nasal to it. "This was me, back then: Rebecca Lang. I'm not sure I got all the details of this body right - it's been too long since I lived it, and I craft a different one every few lives, and they all tend to blur together anyway - but...this was me, for that lifetime. It was the nineteen fifties, and I had a son back then, Charles Lang, who died at the age of nine in a car crash. I lost him, and I lost his nonmagic father - though I, of course, survived it. I wasn't hurt, not even a scratch, but I...I couldn't move. I sat there in the car for several hours before help even came by. Help that I didn't need. Help that I didn't _want_. True, I hadn't been the one driving that day, but I'd had an hour of delusion and thought that maybe, if I wasn't the one driving, then maybe nothing bad could happen. I admit, I'd also sort of given in to pressure, since my husband had bought the car and been becoming increasingly offended every time I refused to drive with him anywhere - I always told him I'd walk. And I always did. But...that day...I saw the stress, I saw the hurt, building up, and I just couldn't refuse him. I finally gave in, finally got in that car, and they both died not even ten minutes later because of it. Therefore: my fault."

"That does sound like it was your fault," Annabelle agreed. "But, either way, I'm sorry for your loss." She was quiet a moment. Then she gestured at all of Adelyn - at her new, transfigured form. "Now this is something I've been curious about - about you," Annabelle started off. "You know that our societies haven't had much of any issue with alternate lifestyles, and gender concepts, and all the rest of the things that the nonmagic societies are still struggling with...but since I met you you've only stayed in your born form. Are you not overwhelmingly uncomfortable with it? Do you accept it, as is, or...? What's the story with that?"

Adelyn ran a hand through long, scraggly blonde hair, and light blue eyes sparkled with humor. "I've never really felt _too_ discomforted by my birth body, yes, that's true, but what I do by staying in it...to be honest, I've only started that this past decade or so. And the reason I do is for the sake of the nonmagic communities. This past decade, there's been a surge in LGBT activism, advocacy groups and organizations formed for them. And in staying in my natural form, I sometimes go undercover as a nonmagic, and I stick with them on it. I help them. I advocate with them. Sometimes I question myself, sometimes I feel...disgusting inside, because I know I can just wave a stick and magically do for myself in an instant what they dream of being able to do for _themselves,_ but that they always tell themselves can't be possible save for in storybooks. The realm of fantasy and sci-fi. The future. Beyond their lifetimes, at the least."

Annabelle walked up to Adelyn and put a hand on her arm. Squeezed it, and looked her in the eye. "That's amazing, Adelyn. It's good, and it's beautiful, and...I wish it didn't have to be. I wish we didn't have this Statute of Secrecy, I wish we could just go out and help people. Help the sick, heal the injured, and give people like that those dreams of theirs. I wish we could show them, tell them. I wish we could, all the time. The Statute, the hiding, the lies, the memory charms, and the discrimination...it's horrific. It's the state of things, but it shouldn't be. It shouldn't _have to be._ "

"I was alive when it didn't used to be," Adelyn responded. "It only happened three hundred years ago, you know, and so for me, I spent the majority of my life in this world before it was ever a thing. Admittedly, I do miss those times. And...also admittedly, since you're similarly sympathetic in mind, I will confess that I've often used my magic, in small ways, here and there, to give nonmagic people a little miracle or two. Nothing so drastic or huge as...what I'd love to just _do for them_ , with my literal centuries of knowledge and experience with healing magics, but...but things that I hope are enough for now. Until the fated day when the Statute is repealed, or forcibly torn down by someone. It wouldn't take much - just a call to a news organization, set up cameras, make an announcement, and show proof. And then that would be it. The lid blown off. And the future...whatever would come, would come."

"It's an eventuality, I agree," said Annabelle, giving Adelyn's arm another squeeze. "And I myself would _love_ to see that day come, whatever might come of it. But...I think we do have to consider the larger picture. There's peace, there's progress, and there's happiness. People are content. Ripping all that away and throwing it into chaos would cause a lot of harm, and pain, and maybe even a full on war. I don't know. But I for one don't want to take that chance of forcing that day to come, and then knowing after that I was responsible for a war. Or worse, a genocide. Maybe some World War Two internment camp type shit. Busting into people's homes, rounding up families, murdering infants and kids. I couldn't ever take that chance. So I think, that no matter how much we might want to push that change, open that box, that we shouldn't force it. We should just wait for the day to come on its own, when it comes."

"But in the meantime, while we do that waiting, we'll just be letting more and more injustices happen!" Adelyn was seething; her hands turned to fists. "More memory charms, violations of basic sapient rights, personal agency, and more standing around watching people die off when we could just flick our wands and fix it all! All of it, and... _and I hate it_."

Adelyn was frantic, her words tumbling out. "I can't stand the Ministries of the world, the way they go around abusing and manipulating, controlling and treating the nonmagic peoples like pigs or chickens. Too stupid to know better, too dumb to ever get the chance to decide for themselves. To remember, to know, and to make a _choice._ Whether that choice is war and genocide, or a better way forward for all of us...they should have that choice. At least the choice!" Tears spilled down Adelyn's pale, narrow cheeks. "And I've been living with all this for so long, seeing it everywhere, so many _deaths_ , that I swear to god Annabelle, I am _this close_ to just throwing up my hands and going for it. Making that push myself. I'd be best suited for it: I'm immortal, I'm unkillable, and i have firsthand memories of what it was like before. I can fight, I can argue and reason, I could do it. The _punishments_ of death or imprisonment, or torture for taking this action wouldn't work on me. I can't be threatened, I can't be cowed. I. Could. _Do this._ "

"I know," Annabelle whispered. "I don't doubt that you could. And if you did, Adelyn, I'd not just be rooting for you - I'd be standing there with you. Because it isn't _just_ against nonmagics, or nonhumans - it's against our own people too; Azkaban and the Dementors, the corruption and bribery, love potions and so much else. It's all wrong, it's all sick, and it all has to end. So let's have it out now, all right? We both want this, either way, however it comes about. But if you...if you want to go out right now, _right now,_ and do it, and just start healing whole hospitals full of nonmagic people, and offering transfiguration services and potions to other transgender people, then tell me you're going to. Tell me your plans, and I'll be right there with you the whole way. Just say the word, and we'll go out right now and start it off. And when the Ministries of the world come together, come down on us, we'll stand and take it. We'll fight them on it all. And if they try to go after the nonmagic governments to quell it, we'll be there to protect them. Maybe we're biting off more than we can chew, with this, plus the SRM, _plus_ the issues within magical society itself, but...I'm sure we have a moral responsibility to use our powers for all of this, and that we have a moral _obligation_ to try anyway. That's just me; I can't say I'll help nonhumans with oppression, but ignore nonmagic issues that I could help and solve too. Yes, there's the possibility of war and chaos that I couldn't live with, but...but I also couldn't live with myself if I didn't try to help when I know I could. So just...tell me, Adelyn: Do you want to do this?"

"Yes." No hesitation. No uncertainty. Just strength. Firmness. And determination.

Annabelle let her hand drop from Adelyn's arm. "All right. Parallel operations, then. Let's get to the nearest hospital, and see what we can do. Let's blow that damn lid right off to outer space, and get started."

Adelyn nodded, breathed out a shaking breath. She plunged a hand into her long coat pocket and drew out a potion vial. She drained it in one swallow. "Twenty four hours," she commented. "Then I'll need another dose of the Felix Felicis." She reached for Annabelle's hand, hers slim and unfamiliar to the latter.

Annabelle herself took a long, steadying breath. She stared around the hotel room, glanced up at Miranwe's corner; the spider was still hard at work, like an unceasing machine. "Okay, let's go-"

*Are you going to leave this room?*

Annabelle blinked. Froze. Staring up at Miranwe, she smiled. *Yeah,* she answered. *I'm going to leave it for a while. Would you like to come with me?*

*It would allow me to keep spying on you,* Miranwe replied, a sort of clicking stutter to her voice, like a broken record. That sound, that stutter, it made Annabelle's smile widen; it was...cute, and she knew what it meant. *So, yes, I'll go with you.*

Drawing her wand, Annabelle said, *Mind if I float you down to me real quick?*

*Float me down?* repeated Miranwe, uncertain. Anxious, as much as she could be. *Will it hurt?*

*No.*

*Then float me down.*

Annabelle gave her wand a flick, and Miranwe's glossy little figure zoomed down from the corner and onto the back of her waiting hand. *Okay, you might want to hide somewhere inside my clothes - if anyone else sees you, they'll try to kill you to protect me.*

*We're in a relationship. We have trust. I won't hurt you.*

*I know you won't, but nobody else does.*

Miranwe, silent and accepting of the logic, crawled up Annabelle's arm and disappeared up the long sleeve of her shirt. When next Annabelle put on her jacket, she was careful not to put any pressure on or rustle Miranwe. Adelyn donned her long coat and fastened her belt; after straightening the pouches, she stuffed two wands, a knife and a handgun down the front of the belt. Finally, she conjured up a black fedora hat to wear.

Together and in silence, Annabelle, Adelyn and Miranwe left the hotel. The normal way - through the halls, down the elevator, and out the front doors.

*Where are we going?* Miranwe asked, as they set off down the sidewalk.

*Well,* Annabelle drew the word out, spoke it quietly as a small group passed her by. She ducked her head and snapped the buttons closed on her jacket, and continued on surreptitiously, *we're going to a place where we can help people. Like how you and I have promised to help each other - but a little bit different.*

*Do you humans do this sort of thing a lot? It sounds like you do.*

*We _should,_ * Annabelle said, a surge of self-loathing, guilt and rage inside her as she spoke the truth. *I should have - should have been doing this ages ago, and damn everything else. I'm complicit, I'm part of the whole problem, the disgusting system, and I...I'll be sorry for it until I die. And I'll spend the time until I die making up for it. I can't ever have called myself good, or moral, before. I don't know if I'll be able to still, even after I do what I'm about to start doing. But at least...I'll be able to know that I started now. Sure, I was a kid before, but that doesn't excuse me to myself. Because even as a kid, I was...* She broke off, shaking her head and huffing to herself.

*I don't understand anything you just said.*

*You will soon,* Annabelle promised. *In fact, if I were to ask you to do something for me...would you?*

*If it doesn't hurt me. You promised to protect me,* Miranwe added in reminder.

*I did, and it won't - I'll even give you another gift, so that you'll be so durable that nothing could even _try_ to hurt you. It won't last forever, it'll be just a couple of hours, but it'll be there, and you won't have to worry about getting hurt.*

*Then I'll do whatever you ask.*

With Miranwe's mind made up, Annabelle began to tell her very specifically, in every little detail and simple terms, what she wanted from the spider. When Annabelle then relayed the conversation and its outcome to Adelyn, the latter woman simply responded with: "That sounds like a wonderful idea."

* * *

As Annabelle and Adelyn were crossing the chilly morning parking lot of the general hospital, a twenty-five floor wonder, they found the path forward blocked by someone who had apparated in, directly in front of them. This person was immediately familiar to Annabelle - the long dark hair, the green eyes, the crooked nose were just so _distinctive._

"Hey, Kyle," Annabelle greeted, shifting weight to one leg and palming her wand in her jacket pocket. "How've you been?"

Kyle looked like he was resisting a very immediate urge to roll his eyes and sigh at her. Instead, he awkwardly put his hands in his pants pockets and took on a slightly hunched posture; he was wearing nonmagic clothes today, not his dark robes of their first encounter. He looked at Adelyn, then took a glance around the busy parking lot before returning his gaze to Annabelle. Then he said, in level tones, "What are you two doing here, and what did you say to Miranwe to convince her to go along with you?"

Annabelle stared at Kyle for a good five seconds, in silence and with her mind working furiously. She felt Miranwe stir in her sleeve. Hesitantly, she parted her lips and spoke her response in arachnatongue. *I just told her she could hang out with me, and we could be friends - oh, and I gave her a few magical presents. Not too different from the one you gave her, from what she's told me.*

*She gave me _two_ presents,* Miranwe said. *They're going to be very useful.*

Kyle sighed a long, deep sigh. *I'm happy for you.*

*And I'm happy she's happy,* Annabelle said.

*I'm happy you're happy for her,* Kyle responded, showing visible annoyance.

*Well, I'm doubly happy that you're happy that I'm happy that she's happy-*

*Why are we doing this?* Kyle cut Annabelle off, his eyes narrowing at her. He took his hands out of his pockets and stood straight and tall. Taller than Annabelle - he looked down his nose at her, literally.

*Why are you here?* said Annabelle, simple and calm. *You said last time that the _next time_ anyone from your _Mortifer_ organization showed up, it wouldn't be you - but here you are.*

*I'm the one asking questions here, not the other way around,* Kyle said sharply. *Answer them.*

*If you want to talk, we'll walk and talk,* Annabelle answered. *We're here to affect some world-changing...uhm, changes, so it's going to be a busy morning for us overall, as you can imagine.*

Kyle snorted at that. *More world-changing changes than you've already been going around making?*

*Yeah. So-* Annabelle started forward, deliberately bumping past Kyle, shoulder to shoulder. She threw a glance back at him as she continued on for the front entrance. *-if you want to interrogate me, you'll have to work with me as I try and find time to fit it into my schedule.*

Kyle stared after her, with his jaw clenched and a flush coming to his cheeks. Adelyn stepped around him - didn't give him so much as a glance or a single word - and caught up to Annabelle with easy, dainty sort of steps; her current physical figure made her significantly lighter on her feet than usual.

The three of them (plus Miranwe!) entered the hospital's entry lobby. Annabelle led the way over to the reception area; she seated herself on a plush armchair - Adelyn and Kyle followed suit, though the latter was more _stiff_ about it than the former.

"Mortifer is into some nasty things," Annabelle spoke, breaking the silence between them. "I looked them up, like you said I should - didn't make much progress - and then I realized that, hey, I have a thousand year old witch sharing my hotel suite who I could try and ask about them. So I did, and she told me _a lot_ about them. You guys are into self-mutilating rituals, enhancing markings, and sometimes animal sacrifices - among other things."

Kyle's gaze flickered to Adelyn. "Rebecca Lang - Adelyn Barnes - yes, Mortifer is well aware of her existence; we've been keeping tabs on her and all her identities for centuries. Though, personally, I think it's a waste of time: she hasn't done much with herself. She could have been so much more, _done_ so much more, but she's spent most of her existence playing hermit or housewife - sometimes both."

"Like what? Should I have tried to become Goddess-Emperor of the world?" Adelyn spoke, voice drenched with sarcasm. "All dictators, every tyrant eventually loses their power, their position, and each and every single one of them all, at some point, comes to deal with rebellion. It all would be just _so much work_ , and for so little gain and so brief a time with it. And besides all the hard work to put into such a thing, I'd have gotten bored on my own with it after a few decades. No, I've much preferred the simple life. The entertainments, the pleasures, the little moments to cherish. The smallest, but most important of memories to keep for eternity."

"Like I said," Kyle said to Annabelle, almost offhand. "A waste. She has one of the greatest gifts life can give - eternal life itself - and she doesn't deserve to have it at all."

"Did you do some reading up of your own between now and the last time we met?" Annabelle inquired. "Because you had no clue who Adelyn was before, _I'm sure._ "

Kyle flushed, and looked away. He stared across the lobby, fixating on a random receptionist attending to a family of four - two men, and two children, boy and girl. When he looked back at Annabelle, his expression was firm with resolve. That irritation was being heavily suppressed. "Your every attempt at mocking me...they won't work, so cut it out; I'm the one in charge here."

"You're about as in charge here as an insect is of a whale," said Adelyn, and she laughed openly.

"Don't make me hurt you," Kyle snapped at her.

"Before you could so much as draw your wand, I'd have already grabbed you and apparated you to the bottom of the ocean," Adelyn spoke, low and fierce, her face twisted with a frightening intensity. "I can survive down there - I don't think that _you_ can."

Unflinching, Kyle turned back to Annabelle. "Tell me what you're planning to do here," he demanded.

"We're going to tear down the Statute of Secrecy, by starting with healing as many people here as we can," Annabelle explained. She gripped her wand tight in her pocket, and she never looked away from Kyle.

Kyle went pale. His eyes widened in unbridled shock, and even a dash of incredulity. "Are you insane?" he snarled. "Do you have any idea what that will do to us all?"

"I know what it will do for the nonmagic population," Annabelle said steadily. "Give them knowledge, freedom, and justice from their abusers. The ones who control them, who play with them like ants on the sidewalk, and see them as nothing deserving of the marvels and luxuries that the magical societies horde for themselves and keep from the nonmagic majority - or even basic sapient rights, such as their own memories and thoughts, untouched by others. The power to heal broken bones in an instant, to cure harsh diseases within an hour's time, and the power to bring the necessities of food, water, and shelter to all the people so desperately in need of it but that they all ignore. The ability to look, sound, and feel how they were meant to and how they want to. The ability to love and be loved just the way they've always dreamed. They'll be able to know what's going on in the world around them, and they'll have the ability to choose, for the first time in three hundred years."

"You think you're some righteous savior," Kyle said harshly, his wand coming out and pointing at her from the hip. "You're going to bring extinction down on our heads."

"Maybe," Annabelle admitted, pulling out her wand too. She gave the arm that held Miranwe a little shake. "We'll just have to see. Just like I had to wait and see how things would play out when, at thirteen, I brought to light the actions of my abusive relatives. Maybe things would go fine, and they'd be arrested and charged without incident - or maybe they'd try to strangle me to death after finding out. Either way, I wasn't going to _not_ go through with it, because no matter the outcome it was all still _wrong._ And this - how the mages treat nonhumans and nonmagics - is just as wrong. And it has to end, and we're making that call, right here and now."

Kyle's expression changed. The rigidity left him. The anger, the outrage, it bled away. Now he was looking at Annabelle with something...soft. He put his wand away and put his head in his hands. "I understand what you're trying to do now - and why - and...I'd like to help you with it."

"Why?" Annabelle said, stowing her wand away again. A moment later and Adelyn did the same, her face still a storm of all the burning things inside of her.

"Why?" Kyle echoed, his voice rough and low. He lifted his head, and his mask of stone and neutrality was gone. There was anguish, and pain, and doubt all over it now. "Well, besides the fact that your explanation indicates that your goals will quite probably have a positive benefit for Mortifer...I can empathize with you."

Annabelle cocked her head. "Can you?"

"Y-yes," Kyle said, struggling to even speak. He lowered his gaze several times. He couldn't hold Annabelle's eye now at all. "My own childhood was...similarly difficult. My mother...wasn't much of a good one. I was always being screamed at, struck with open hands and heavy objects, and even- even, you know, _touched_. I wasn't much of a real person to her, just an object, a toy - a dead weight in her life. A lot of times I got no food, no water, for days a time. For no real reason, I suppose, though she gave me a dozen different ones over the years. It only got worse when I was ten, and found out I was a wizard. She was a muggle, and suddenly she wanted me to do anything and everything for her magically. I was the goose with the golden egg, and she wanted that egg. And I gave it to her, most of the time. Or, I tried, anyway."

Kyle clasped his shaking hands in his lap, and briefly ducked his head and let out a woosh of shuddering air. His shoulders were shaking, his foot was tapping the floor like a woodpecker. "So she decided to home-school me - we set it up with the Ministry, and we had a private instructor come out every few months to check up on my progress. And I studied, and I learned, and I did magic. And at first, I did good enough for her. But then she started asking for more, for better, and even asked me to use my powers to do illegal things for her. Get into banks, steal from neighbors, blackmail and extort everyone around us."

"And I did it - you have to understand that things are different over here; when you get a wand and a license for it you're not monitored, we don't have a Trace - and I did it for her, and I was...I felt good, for the first time. She was good to me, for the first time. She _rewarded me_ after each success, and...I felt good about that too. I was getting genuine praise, and warmth, and what she called love. But, after a year or two, all that was gone again. I couldn't keep up with her demands, her tasks, her...I just couldn't. I got burnt out, I got sick, tired. And she got worse again, and I got worse again. And the more I failed to produce results, the more she...got on me about it, which just led to a circle of me becoming even less confident in myself, and then her becoming even more furious with me. At fourteen, I was useless, malnourished - a thrown out piece of garbage to my mother. And she threw me out, literally, and I spent three weeks out on the streets...until an agent of Mortifer found me."

Kyle swiped at his mouth, licked his lips, and then did it again. His hand came up after, his fingers curled, as if he was about to start biting his nails, but the reflex was caught by conscious mind, and the hand fell back down into his lap. "Her name was Jenny. She taught me how to be strong, how to not be afraid of doing magic - or failing to do it - and she trained me. She gave me a room, a bed, good food. She held me, comforted me, made me feel safe and secure, and _loved_ for the first time in my life. She had fun, she _was fun_ , and she took me on social outings several times a month. She was like the mother I'd always wished I could have had. When I sixteen, Jenny supported me when I decided to go back to my mother's house. I decided to talk to her, to ask her _why_ , now that I was strong enough to do so. I was still scared of her - terrified, really - don't get me wrong, but...with Jenny behind me, and with everything I'd learned...I was able to manage it. And I did, and I tried to talk to her, and I think I was as polite and kind as I could have been, considering it all. But things still didn't go well that night, for anyone: I didn't get my answers out of her, Jenny got a kitchen cleaver to the stomach, and my mother was killed in self-defense."

"Did Jenny live through it?" asked Annabelle quietly.

"Yeah," said Kyle, looking at her in surprise. "It was a nonmagic injury - she fixed herself up in a heartbeat." His gaze went to the family across the lobby again, who seemingly having a bad time getting attended to. "You're really going to do that here? For all these people? Do you know how many people are even in this place? Do you know how long it will take the three of us to get to each and every one of them? What will we do when the Ministry shows up? Have you thought about any of that?"

Annabelle looked to Adelyn, who smiled and gave a little fluttering wave of her delicate fingers. "We have; we discussed the details on the walk over here. And we're prepared for whatever comes our way - even if that means a short notice call for assistance from some of our allies. And we're prepared to spend a few hours here, just getting through as many people as we can. Are you, Kyle?"

Kyle gave a short, nervous nod. "I guess I'll find out? I'll commit to helping you with this, and I'll defend you, and all these people against the Magical governments of the world if it comes to it - wouldn't be the first time they've come after my head," he added, with the smallest of smiles tugging at his lips.

"Don't remind me," Annabelle said seriously. "You might be a good guy, and there might be some other good people with Mortifer, and their _end goals_ might be nice, but the overall means and methods you use aren't too good. And that's as inexcusable as the magical world's treatment of nonhumans and nonmagics."

"I know," Kyle sighed. "And I don't like it. I really don't. But...I don't know how to change that, and-"

"And they're your family," Annabelle finished. "I know. They saved you, helped you, raised you, and that's good. I know. But...try to give a bit of thought to the rest of what they are, and if it's the right place for a guy like you to be, yeah?"

"Yeah," Kyle muttered, refusing once again to meet her gaze. "Can we get started with this already?"

"If your interrogation is over, any time would be a good time to get started," Annabelle replied, flashing a teasing smile as she stood up. Kyle quickly got to his feet and looked anywhere but at her; Adelyn shook her head and stood, an amused sparkle in her eyes. And when she looked at Kyle, there wasn't that anger from before - just pity, and sympathy, and even a certain gentleness.

The three of them crossed the lobby and approached the nearest free receptionist.

"Good morning," spoke the receptionist - a forty-something man with a pleasant and welcoming demeanor to him. "Are you here for an appointment or are you visiting someone?"

"Neither," Annabelle answered. She glanced at Adelyn; she gave Kyle a brief look too. This was the moment. This was it. Lid blown off, no going back. The future would come...whatever it would be. For nonmagic humans, the fight to have better than they'd always had in life started now, just like the fight for nonhuman betterment had begun this year too. "We're mages - her and I are witches, and he's a wizard - and we came here hoping we could use our magical talents to help the sick and the injured that are here today."

The receptionist simply smiled at her. "Of course. Now, Ms.-"

"Potter. Annabelle Potter."

"Ms. Potter, have you been having any other thoughts like this recently? Were you in an accident, or can you recall ever falling and hitting your head?"

Annabelle blinked. _Okay_ , she thought. _Expected. That was totally expected. Now it's time for the unexpected._ Drawing her wand out of her jacket, she cast the simplest of spells: a transfiguration spell to turn the receptionist's nameplate into solid and very real - but not _lasting_ \- gold. Gold was one of those minerals that had an _odd_ reaction when magic was used on it, or if magic was used to change something else into gold. Nobody knew why; it was just the way it was, just some innate property of it. Magic and gold just didn't mix. For today, however, it would be able to serve a good purpose.

The receptionist shot up from his desk, his eyes wide and fixed on the nameplate. He touched it, ran his hands over it, and then picked it up and turned it every which way. After a full half a minute of this, he set it down with a heavy thud, and looked to Annabelle. "How did you do this?"

Annabelle smiled. "I told you: we're mages. I used magic," she said, kind and patient.

The receptionist shook his head at her. "And how can I be sure this wasn't a trick? Maybe someone set you three up for this, sent you in to make me look stupid?"

"We can do a whole lot more, if you need more proof," Annabelle responded, raising her wand again. "How about this: you ask us to do anything you can imagine - anything weird, or impossible, or supernatural - and we'll do it. The only limitations are that we can't raise the dead, we can't just go and spontaneously create new human life, and any food conjured out of nothingness will hold no nutritional value. But other than that, there'd be no way we could have set up for every possibility, for _any_ possibility you could think of off the top of your head. Right?"

"Right." The receptionist frowned in thought; he toyed with the heavy gold nameplate again, pushing it around on the desk like he expected it to explode any second now and shower him in confetti. "Okay, then, I-"

Annabelle reached out and took the receptionist's arm, and then she disapparated. They reappeared on the rooftop garden of a tall building that overlooked a massive cathedral.

The receptionist lost his balance, and fell right over and started puking. "What the _hell_ did you just do?!"

"Teleported us - sorry."

"Teleported? Are you kidding me?" The receptionist looked around himself, wide-eyed and pale-faced. He made for the edge, gripped the railing and stared down into the streets far below. He shook his head and backed away, turning to face Annabelle again. "No way we're actually way up here now. You probably drugged me and-"

"What did you come up with for me to do for you?" Annabelle interrupted. _Let's not go backwards here._ "We're a dozen city blocks away and sixty-three stories above where we just were, so you ask me to give you your proof, and you have to accept it - or we keep doing things my way until I wear you down."

There was a long silence. "Okay. Deal. I'll accept your whole magic thing if you can do...what I'm going to ask you to do. I'll even help vouch for you with the rest of the staff so you can go around doing your Jesus thing like you want."

" _No!_ " Annabelle firmly rebuked, shaking her head. "I'm not a god, I'm not an angel; I'm just a human, who, for whatever reason - or random chance of the universe - was born with the power _to reshape the universe_. But that's all I am, that's all there is to this. Please, don't ever think that I'm some divine entity."

"You're going to be saying that a lot if you really plan on doing what you want to do here."

"Point taken," Annabelle sighed. She strode over to the edge of the roof. She leaned out over the railing. Glanced at the receptionist. "What do you want me to do for you?" she reminded the man.

"Could you turn that bench over there into an elephant?"

"Yes," Annabelle confirmed. She pointed her wand and focused her mind, and she committed to the transfiguration. Several seconds later, and a full grown, living elephant was there on the rooftop with them. She grabbed the shocked man's arm and pulled him over to the elephant, careful and slow, until they were close enough to touch - and then she made the man touch the animal. Pressed his hand to a massive leg. The elephant turned at the contact, and Annabelle flicked her wand and reverted it back into a bench. "Convinced?"

The man gave a trembling, mute nod.

"Well, just to be sure-" Annabelle seized the man's arm more securely, and disapparated out off the roof into the air. They fell, wind rushing fiercely past them, tumbling together. The man was screaming, flailing. Annabelle apparated out of the air and into the hospital lobby when they were about five stories from striking the pavement.

Although the act of Apparating properly reoriented them, as well as killed their momentum entirely, the after effects of the experience itself were still being felt by the receptionist. He had fallen to his knees, gasping and sweating. He puked; Annabelle vanished the mess with a twitch of a finger.

Annabelle dropped down beside the man and awkwardly patted him on the back. "Sorry to do that to you, but what we're going to do here has to be done quick as much as careful - once we commit to this, once word gets out what we're doing here...everything changes. And a lot of people with a lot of power aren't going to like that. They'll come here, they'll try to capture us, subject us to torture after, and they'll trap and manipulate the minds of every single nonmagic person in this hospital. Staff, visitors, patients: everyone. You'll have your memories shifted around and erased. And all of that just because we're going to help people who need it - people we have _the ability to help._ Now, when these people arrive to do these things to you, we are going to stop that from happening, but we need to set things up here fast before they even get word of us, to counter them and block them out when they do arrive. Do you understand - and, what's your name, please?"

"It's David." The receptionist wiped his mouth. He righted himself, gave her a nod. He was determined, but...also horrified by the information. This reaction just affirmed the course of action in Annabelle's mind; this was _right._ "David Arguette."

"Ah, wonderful." Adelyn approached, a slender hand absently stroking through her own hair. "Anna, why don't you and David go and get the rest of the staff on board, and get started with today's _agenda_? Kyle and I will make ourselves useful and start netting up a protective field around the building - between the two of us, and all our knowledge of _obscure_ magics, I'm sure we'll be able to come up with something that will keep the international forces out of here - perhaps even indefinitely. Isn't that right, Kyle?"

Kyle pressed his lips together, threw a glance at Annabelle. He sighed. "I'm sure I can think of something."

"All right then." Annabelle looked at the others in turn. "Let's get this started; oh, but I just have to ask one thing, and make _one little pop away_ before we start," she continued, turning to David, as Kyle disapparated with Adelyn firmly grasping his arm. "Here's the question: how big of a health hazard would you say are foreign species of spiders and large lizards?"

"Uh, a really big one," David replied seriously, furrowing his brows in confusion. "We're always doing our best here to keep this place as sterile as possible, you know. That's sort of critical to the entire operation of a hospital. Why? Do you and your pals need to do some animal rituals or something first in order to...do your thing?"

"No." Annabelle shook her head. "I'm asking because, when the people show up here to try and capture us and mind wipe all of _you,_ and if things get really out of hand at that point, we'll need some more protection for you all - protection in the form of an unknown number of sapient, magi-arachnids, and maybe one or possibly even two dragons. Also sapient."

"Are you fucking with me-"

"We've been over this - not fucking with anyone," Annabelle cut across David sharply. "Listen to me: when I say _sapient_ , yes, I do mean that they have human level emotions and intelligence. And, yes, all manner of fairy tale and mythological creatures _do exist_. So, again, I need to know: will it be a health hazard if I call them in to help protect all of you? I'd honestly rather not have to, since your nonmagic government is probably likely to send out tanks and helicopters to missile the ever-loving _shit_ out of any free-flying dragons and giant spiders clustered in their grand New York City - but, _if it comes to it_ , I'll want them here."

David stared. Clenched his formerly slack jaw. "I- okay. So dragons are real. Awesome. You can't fit a dragon in a building, so as long as it stays outside, I don't think that will be a problem for the patients here. As for your terrifying giant sentient spiders, if you could keep them out here in the lobby then that's the best we could do. If they start roaming the halls or anything, a _lot_ of people here might honest to god die of heart attacks - not to mention any diseases or whatever else they might have."

 _To mount a suitable defense of the building...that will have to do, unless push_ really _comes to shove,_ Annabelle thought. Better a few people wet themselves over spiders in the corridors than be taken into international mage custody and have their minds altered against their consent.

"All right," said Annabelle. "I'll be back in a minute, and then we can go talk to the rest of your staff - don't go anywhere." She looked around the lobby, scanning the crowds and groupings of visitors and staff alike who were pointing and talking about the impossible disappearing acts she and her companions had been doing the past few minutes in plain view. She took a breath, focused her mind, and she did it again - and again, in plain view.

* * *

 _ **Mountains of Montana state, U.S.A.**_

* * *

Annabelle appeared high up in the windy, rocky mountains. Just outside Norberta's magically created cave system of a home. A place for herself, her incubating egg, and her fellow male dragon of a...friend.

She pointed her wand at her throat, and spoke in amplified volumes that reached into the depths of the cave. [Norberta, Emerich? I'm sorry to call you both out and away from whatever it is you're doing right now, but I have an emergency situation on my hands that requires the protection only you two can offer. There are a lot of people - humans - that are going to be in danger really soon, and my companions and I can't protect them all with just the three of us. So, please, if you're home, could you come out, and come with me?]

Norberta's lumbering figure came rampaging out of the darkness, shaking the ground under Annabelle's feet so badly she felt about to lose her balance entirely. [Just tell me where to go and who to eat - or turn into a crispy snack - and I'll be there! Who are we protecting, and who are we protecting them from?]

[Okay,] Annabelle said delicately, raising a hand. [Norberta, I realize you're in full-on, motherly-instincts mode these days, but for the sake of not starting a full blown war, can you promise me that you'll _try_ to stamp down on your blood lust?]

[Answer! Who! Eat!] Norberta snapped, opening up her enormous wingspan and rearing her head high.

[Bloodlust. Restrain. Or not telling,] Annabelle retorted, shaking her head and setting a hand on her hip.

Norberta snorted out a heavy blast of flames over Annabelle's head. Her long neck drooped slightly. [I'll try. Please explain?]

[Adelyn, that Kyle guy and I are preparing a nonmagic hospital in New York for fortification against international government forces that are going to arrive to do us in - and everyone else in there - after they become aware that we're tearing the Statute of Secrecy down for all the world to see.]

Norberta let out a long series of hisses - dragon laughter. Laughter with an undertone of near _mania_. [You've always voiced your opinion on the problems your magical societies have with morality and rights - and I've always agreed with and supported you in them. If you think now is the time to bring all of the injustices and oppression out into the open, then I'm all for it. So, what's the address of this hospital? Where do you want me when the fighting starts? On the roof? Circling high above? Patrolling the windows? Down on the ground, sitting my huge scaly butt right in front of the entrance? If we're not killing anyone, can I cripple and terrorize instead?!]

[High above,] Annabelle said. She frowned. [I don't want you to make a target of yourself any more than we'll be targets inside. Keep mobile, keep safe as best you can. Be opportunistic, all right? Do some swoops and grazing, with claws and fire breath alike. Try to remember that we're not intending on starting an all out war here. The goal is to keep as many of them away from the building as possible, not to slaughter as many people as you can.]

[I understand, and I can do that,] said Norberta; she gave a very human nod of her head, quick and sharp with excitement.

[Good. Where's Emerich? Do you think he'll agree to help with this?]

Norberta lifted her left fore claw. She tapped it against the rocky ground, like she was testing it. Her lengthy, armored tail swished behind her. [He's inside, way back - with Sevra. And I want him to stay there with her; if something goes wrong at this hospital, I want her to have him at least.]

[Sevra. Her,] Annabelle noted, a smile coming to her lips. [You know the sex, and you've picked a name? All right: just us then. Like always. I'll set up a portkey really quick here for you that will drop you off on the roof of the hospital. Get airborne as soon as you see government forces start appearing below. If they attack you, or anyone else, start attacking back. If they try getting into the building first, stop them. And keep stopping them. But please, don't just go tearing into them before they even do anything.]

[Understood!] Norberta flexed all the muscles in her back and legs, and gave her wings a few experimental flaps that kicked up dust.

Annabelle took two minutes to make the portkey - she used a nearby rock - and then gave Norberta a long, critical look. [Before I throw this at you, let's lay out a few contingencies, all right? We've always had those, we need them now more than ever.]

Norbert held her head high, gazed down at Annabelle with utmost attention. [All right. Contingencies - I like those.]

Five minutes was spent in discussion, memorizing and planning, and then Annabelle finally tossed the portkey at Norberta. That taken care of, for Annabelle's next stop she apparated to the underground tribe home of Nyllia (all the way over in Africa).

*Sorry to barge in like this,* Annabelle began (voice amplified again), as many a magi-arachnid began to crowd her. She looked past them, over them all, to Nyllia's massive, looming form. *Nyllia, I know this is short notice, and I'm sorry - but, I'd like to ask for your tribe's assistance in protecting the lives of dozens of my people inside a human den, against international and official magical forces. Injuries and death might occur, and it might be necessary to stay for several hours. Yes or no?*

Nyllia's booming voice returned with: *Yes - have you forgotten? You are my tribedaughter, just the same as all the others I care for in my territories. I will always be here to help a tribe member, and every tribe member will be here to help one another as well. And...you fight for all. I will gladly fight for all right alongside you,* she finished warmly.

*Okay,* Annabelle nodded - force of habit. *Great. Thank you. Unfortunately, I think you're too big to show up personally to help out without causing a lot of unnecessary deaths, but if you could send a sizable number of smaller tribe members through a _lucar_ bridge leading to right about...here...* She waved her wand and created a shimmering globe of the Earth in the air above them all. On this globe, a red light flared over the hospital's position in New York City. *If you could get them here, that would be appreciated.*

*It is possible to create a new _lucar_ connection to that area for my tribechildren. What would they do once they are there?* Nyllia inquired, her voice soft and musing. *Do you have a strategy for the defense of this den?*

Annabelle nodded again, and then she told Nyllia the plan she had in mind.

After they'd worked out the details of their joint operation, Annabelle disapparated. But she did not go straight back to the hospital.

She had one more "ally" she wanted to visit, ask for assistance from. Unlike the ones she had successfully recruited so far, however, this last one would stand a very fair chance of refusing the call to aid...

* * *

 _ **St. Claire's Hospital, New York**_

* * *

When Annabelle at last reappeared in the lobby of the hospital, it was to shouting and general panic. She immediately spotted David, who was conversing rapidly with a little group of other hospital staff members.

"He's not crazy, I'm not crazy - here's proof," Annabelle said, inserting herself into their discussion. She flicked her wand at a nearby plant and caused it to grow and sprout up into a twenty foot tall Christmas tree, decorated with lights and baubles and all manner of golden streamers. The multitude of visitors, friends and families in the lobby had a wide array of reactions to this: some fear, some more panic, some awe, a little disbelief still in the eyes of some. Annabelle strode into the middle of the lobby and turned her wand on her throat; she amplified her voice and began to speak to everyone - not _just_ in the lobby, but to everyone in the entire hospital - in tones patient, calm, and careful.

"Everyone - hello. I'm sure you've all noticed some really strange, impossible things going on here this morning. I'm responsible for them. I'm a witch, my name is Annabelle Potter, and I've been using magic. Yes, magic is real. Magic, and every fairy tale creature and nonhuman being, is real. It's all been kept hidden from you for the past three hundred years. And the methods by which it has all been hidden, stems from a viewpoint of oppression, of superiority in most magical societies."

"The magical governments of the world regularly have no regard for your free will, your own agency as human beings. Your minds are regularly erased whenever you see something magical, or someone magical. Sometimes, some of you are even mind controlled into serving as out and out slaves for some magical event or other, where afterward you're mind wiped and put back in your home without being any the wiser."

"It's wrong, it's all wrong, and myself and my friends and allies have decided that it ends today. Because...because the international magical governments aren't _just_ harming you all, they're also actively preventing any people like me and my friends from using our magic in blatant and easy ways to help all of you without. And I'm here today because I can't live with myself knowing that I could save lives, and help so many people, but that some government has made it illegal and punishable by torture for me to even try doing so. So here I am, here we are, and I'm going to work with the hospital staff today to try and magically heal as many people as I can."

Annabelle paused, watched everyone around her. Staring, muttering - more than a few still thought she was just nuts. An escaped mental patient or some such, she thought she heard out there. She sighed. Smiled. "If anyone has any questions, if anyone wants to come and see firsthand, or even wants to _refuse_ to have their family member or their friend treated by me - by magic - then you can do so. You can ask anything, and I will respect whatever you wish. I just want to help people here."

"Now, I do have to tell all of you some other things about today. About how the day is going to most likely go because of the decision to be here and to reveal the existence of magic to the nonmagic societies again. The international, human mage governments are going to dispatch people to try and capture and stop me and my friends from helping you all, and from spilling the secrets of it all like we are."

"To prevent it from getting out, they're going to take all of you, and they are going to wipe all your memories. Put you back at home, or in your hospital beds, and you'll never know anything life-changing happened today. I want you all to understand something: I'm not going to stop anyone from leaving if they want to, but know that if you do, the magical governments will easily just go to your homes and do you in there. Your best chance of keeping your own agency, and your own rights intact, is to stay in here with me and my friends and allies."

"We're going to put up protections around the building, and we're going to have some allies of ours patrolling and protecting the place. Protecting all of you who want it. Who stay here for whatever reason you have. But it's entirely optional, and voluntary. If you want to stay here, maybe see your family members healed, maybe keep your memories of the wider world around you, then you stay here, please. But if you don't, you're free to leave any time."

Again, Annabelle gave pause to let her words sink in with the crowd. In the shouting and high emotions that followed, Annabelle heard an echoing roar of ferocity from outside - and high above. Most everyone around her startled and went quiet at the noise. Terror. "Nobody has to panic over that - that's just Norberta, and she's my best friend. Also a dragon. Yes, dragons are real. They're as smart and emotional as any human. They're reasonable, they're kind, and, in Norberta's case, really lazy and cowardly. Trust me, she's a sweetie. And today, she's going to take part in the defense of this building and every single one of you in it."

"This all has to be some big game!" a woman yelled out, angrily storming up to Annabelle. Charcoal hair, stringy and short, eyes darker than. She looked a good few years older than Annabelle was. "Or is it an awareness campaign for something? Did you book the hospital for a religious presentation?"

"It's exactly what I've said it is," Annabelle said calmly, her voice still amplified.

The woman frowned. Her hand swiped out for Annabelle's throat, and she crudely started lifting and checking inside her jacket. "How are you _doing that?_ Where did you hide the mic? Where-"

Annabelle disapparated, and reappeared on the roof. [Norberta, did you get a hairball, or were you signalling me for something?]

[Well, actually it's-] Norberta began.

"We're ready to raise the protective field," Kyle said, apparating in right beside Annabelle, with Adelyn on his arm.

"Not a moment too soon," Adelyn lamented, rushing to the ledge and pointing to the streets below. Various robed and other clothed figures had begun to pop into existence at the front doors to the hospital. Most went inside, while a dozen others began waving their wands and setting up a perimeter to keep the people on the streets from noticing them at all...or trying to enter the hospital. Adelyn's face twisted at the sight. "Kyle, let's get this in place, yes? On three. One, two, three...!"

Adelyn and Kyle began to take up a furious chant, like auctioneers they were so fast with it, that took them through half a dozen different languages, old and new. Their wand tips glowed purple, and then around the hospital formed a purple dome. It shimmered, glistened with blue particles here and there. It was almost a second skin, the barrier within a foot or two of the exterior of the building. The dome top far exceeded the rooftop, however, in contrast to the rest of it.

"To give dear Norberta some room to rest if she has to," Adelyn explained the extra space on top, with a warm look at Norberta. "We'll all be capable of passing through the barrier as we please - as well as apparating freely within or on either side of it - as will anyone that the barrier recognizes has no magic in them. The same won't be said of the government forces below, however."

"Good work," Annabelle praised. She switched to draketongue as she looked to Norberta again. [Are you ready? Remember: just circle around up high for a while. Wait until they actually try and breach the barrier, or if they start assaulting people that you can see. But please, don't just go crazy on them. Remember _the_ plan, and _don't forget the backup plans_.]

[I'm perfectly sane, thank you.] Norberta spread her wings, and took off into the sky with a gust of wind so powerful it knocked Annabelle and Kyle right over - Adelyn was fine.

Trying not to think of the hell she'd just unleashed upon New York, of a kind not seen since the infamous and outrageous events of 1926 involving Newt Scamander (which had resulted in a city-wide obliviation of millions of people), Annabelle got to her feet again, gave Kyle and Adelyn brief nods, and apparated back down into the lobby. They followed her.

Annabelle was immediately greeted by her skeptic nonmagic woman staring her in the face - who now no longer looked so skeptical. "Sorry, that was rude of me," said Annabelle. She paused. "But you know, you were being rude too; hands off this woman unless she's given you permission."

"I - I'm sorry," said the woman; Annabelle didn't know if she meant sorry for the inappropriate contact, or sorry because she didn't understand why _Annabelle_ was apologizing. It sounded like a question at the same time as it _didn't_.

Annabelle looked down at the floor. "Yeah, so, what are you planning to do today? Do you have anyone here? Are you sick or hurt, yourself? Do you plan on going home? Because if you are..." She put her wand to her throat and amplified her voice again. "Sorry, everybody, but: the magical government forces are here. They're outside the front doors, and they're going to be trying to find a way in. A way past the protective barrier we just put in place. I don't know if they eventually will or not, but please, remember that your best bet at staying safe and of sound mind is to stay here." She reverted her volume to normal, and gave the woman in front of her a smile. "What're your plans, uh...?"

"Helena Dark," the woman responded, frowning deeply. "I have a son in here - Jesse, he's six - and he has cancer. Leukemia. Could you...do something for him? Could you _really?_ All this - the tree, that purple glass stuff out there, your voice - it's all _spectacle._ But that could still all be fake, some big set up. But my son, if you could...that'd be real. You couldn't fake that. And...I'd owe you a thousand times over, I think. If you could make it go away."

"I can handle the cancer," Adelyn spoke up, gentle and compassionate. "I have several centuries of hands on experience with treating such things in the past - before the Statute came and ruined things for everyone. Of course, way back then, no one knew what to call it - medieval societies didn't exactly have an understanding of science and medicine in any way comparable to modern times - but...I was still able to cure six hundred and eighty-two cases of various cancers in those times."

"Six hundred?!" Helena gaped. "Do you never sleep or something?"

"No, I don't," Adelyn said honestly. She hesitated, and then her skin transformed. Became pale as a ghost. Her eyes turned scarlet. Her fangs sprang out of her mouth. "That would be because I'm a vampire. I've lived a thousand years on this Earth, and today...well, today those thousand years of medical and magical knowledge are at your service _._ "

Helena stared. Looked Adelyn up and down. Then she looked her in the eye. Dark brown on glittering scarlet. "Just - please - make him better again. I don't care who or what you even all are, I don't care, just...if you can do something for him...please do it."

"If you would kindly show me to his room, I can get started," Adelyn answered, a note of surprise in her voice as she regarded Helena. Helena nodded, and the pair left the lobby down a back corridor.

"Ms. Potter, uhm, witch lady?" David spoke, catching Annabelle's attention.

"What is it?" said Annabelle patiently.

"We've all agreed to stick it out here if we'll be safest, and we all agree that we're willing to let you do your magic healing thing - just under the strict supervision of some of the physicians, nurses, and the chief medical officer here. I'll turn you over to them, and I need to go start helping with keeping people calmed down around here."

"Thank you." Annabelle watched David go, then turned to the physicians and nurses. "So, who am I treating first?"

One of the others stepped forward. "Brian Letto. Good to meet you, Ms. Potter. I suppose, to see what you can do and how you do it, we'll start you off with a simple case. I'll take you to one of my charges, and we'll see this...this magic of yours. After, we'll want to run tests, of course - and, if this whole siege situation of yours gets resolved with our minds and lives intact, we'll also want to keep in contact with everyone you might treat here over the next few years. We'll put a big fat 'M' in their records, for _magically cured._ If you can do that."

"I understand," said Annabelle, nodding. "Lead the way, Dr. Letto."

* * *

As a child, during her seven years at Hogwarts, Annabelle had invested most of her off time to learning and practicing healing magic. In a childhood of utter abuse - of _hurt -_ once she had discovered a way to put a stop to it, she had seized on it with everything she had. No more pain, she had told herself. Never again. Of course, she had had a bit of a double standard here, as pain inflicted upon herself, _by herself_ had still been a thing she had done and gone through, but...but it was one she'd gotten over too, in time. With help, with a lot of conversation, she had stopped that. No more pain at all, no matter who or where it came from.

Now, Annabelle was going to do the same thing for so many other people.

And it all started here: patient room 514. Jared Munn. Age thirty-one. Spinal cord injury from a car accident six weeks ago, along with three broken ribs and a broken arm.

"Jared, how's it going today?" Dr. Letto greeted his patient, while two other physicians began checking monitors and other readouts.

"Same as yesterday," Jared shrugged. He noticed Annabelle (and her distinctly _unprofessional attire_ ). "Who's this?"

"The witch who's going to see if she can heal you with her magic," Dr. Letto explained, with a look on his face that said he was in total disbelief about the words coming out of his mouth right then. "Annabelle Potter is her name."

"The one who gave that whole D&D spiel over the intercoms?" Jared laughed. He gave Annabelle a thumbs up with his good arm. "Nice one. It was really cool to listen to. There a campaign going on in one of the waiting areas? If there is, do you think I could wheel on down there for it- _hey, what the hell?!_ "

Annabelle sat down on the cushioned, high backed armchair that had formerly been known as a random pebble in her jacket pocket that she had picked up off the street half an hour ago. "Witch. Magic. Real," she succinctly informed Jared. "And, that wasn't your intercom: that was me. I used magic to make my voice heard throughout the entirety of this hospital building."

"So that noise- and when you said it was a dragon...?" Jared's eyes were wide. "All of that was true? It's all real? I mean, there's really a _fucking dragon_ up on the roof right now?"

"Depends - she might be airborne at the moment," Annabelle answered, smiling. "But, yes. She's real, and everything I said is true. And I'm here to do what I said in my announcement: to heal you, and as many other people as I can in several hours' time."

"All right, let's have it then." Jared responded to her smile with a weak one of his own.

"Okay." said Annabelle. "Just tell me if you feel any pain or...anything; I've never actually practiced on anyone besides myself, my few friends, and a few random patients."

"That's not comforting," Jared spoke, at the same time as Dr. Letto asked, "Wait, are you medically certified at all?"

"I have...battlefield experience," Annabelle said honestly. "And I spent seven years learning and practicing this branch of magic, _and I did_ spend a few months under the tutelage of someone who _is_ medically certified - or, the equivalent in magical society, anyway."

"How old are you?" Dr. Letto questioned, looking almost exasperated with Annabelle now.

"Eighteen - we mature faster and do things much earlier than nonmagical societies do, though we live two to three times as long as the nonmagic human, on average," said Annabelle calmly.

"Jesus, you're just a kid?" Jared exclaimed. "Not so sure I want you using _actual magic_ on my insides now, honey..."

"I thought I already established by now that I'm _not_ your Holy Messiah?" Annabelle returned.

Jared laughed. "You misunderstood me, kid."

A second passed, and Annabelle understood. She felt her cheeks warming, and she looked away. "Right, sorry," she muttered. She took a breath, and then looked Jared in the eye. "Look, I know I'm young, but I'm a legal adult, and so that's how it is. I'm still trained, I'm still skilled, and I've put all of it to practical use a dozen times over. I can do this. I can heal you. You just have to trust me that I'm not going to screw up and liquefy your organs."

"Shit, can that happen?" Jared asked, sitting upright as best he could. "Serious here, sweetheart. Does that _just happen_ if you mess up?"

"It _could_ happen - but, no, it doesn't _normally_ happen," Annabelle assured. "Not even in cases of screw ups. So...so can I have your permission to do this for you, Mr. Munn?"

"You've got it," Jared sighed. He threw a glance at Dr. Letto. "Not sure about the doc here's opinion on it, but mine is still: let's go for it."

"If you pull this off, I'll let you make some rounds," Dr. Letto told Annabelle. "If not, sorry, but, good intentions or not, I couldn't let a dangerous thing like horrific magic get near my patients."

"Understood." Annabelle scooted forward in her chair, leaning over Jared's hospital bed. She brought her wand up, and began muttering the incantations necessary to repair the known damages. She cast a diagnostic spell, and she was relieved at what she found: perfection. "All right, your ribs and your arm should be totally fine now. Feel free to test them out - just, slowly. And, if you'd allow me to levitate you, I can get you into an easy position that will let me get at your spine to finish this off."

Jared waved his formerly broken arm around. Banged it against the nightstand. Bent his elbow and straightened it out. He touched all along the arm with the fingers of his other hand. He sat up a lot straighter, and ran his hands over his abdomen. He took a huge breath - let it out again. And he laughed an airy laugh. "I can't believe it! You actually did it. Just- just- that's _it_? A couple seconds of focus and incantations, and boom, a guy's arm and ribs are fine as the day he was born? There wasn't even any dramatic flashes of light or anything."

"As I was once told by a very old, very accomplished wizard: bangs and smoke are often the signs of ineptitude," Annabelle said, unable to keep a smile off her face.

"Well, from what I can see and feel just with my own two eyes and hands," Dr. Letto began, as he tested and pressed Jared's former wound areas. "I'm very, very impressed. It's like a miracle. A real miracle. I'll want to take some x-rays after, if you can really fix his spinal injury too. A broken bone is simple, but a spine? That's complicated, that's..." He trailed off, giving Annabelle a look of mingled astonishment and contemplation. "I'll have to see it."

"To science, understanding how it all works, it's complicated," said Annabelle, readying her wand again. "But magic...magic doesn't _need_ to understand how something works in order to do something. The _caster_ doesn't have to understand. I didn't need to study up on the mineral composition of a rock, or the chemical composition of a chair and string in order to transfigure the stone into the armchair I'm sitting on right now. It's the same for anything, and everything," she concluded patiently. "Now, magic itself _does_ have rules, laws, subtleties, differences, but...but when it comes to magic and how it affects nonmagical things, there's no need to _know_."

"Good to know," Dr. Letto murmured.

"Alright, let's go three for three," said Jared, relaxing into the bed. There was a beaming smile on his face now. "You fix my spine, no problems, and I'll send you gift baskets every year for the rest of your supernatural life. And if I die before then, I'll have my kids carry on the tradition. Probably grandkids, too - you _did_ say you people live to be two hundred to three hundred years, right?"

"Yeah, we do," Annabelle confirmed. "But there's no need to thank me for this. I'm just doing the right thing. Not for praise, or glory, or anything else. Just...because it's right, and _somebody has to._ " She flicked her wand and slowly lifted Jared off the bed by several feet. She rotated him onto his side, and she cast a diagnostic spell on his back. She found the injury, the breakage. The damage. And she spent five seconds muttering to herself in order to fix it. She let Jared down again, and sat back in her chair.

Jared stared down at himself. He pulled the blankets aside, and he moved his legs and feet. He was crying when he looked at Annabelle. Crying when he told her, "It's like it never even happened."

In that moment Annabelle knew, with the certainty of her entire being, that this was good - that this was _right_ , and that _this was worth the fight that was to come for them over it._

* * *

Annabelle stopped at the door to the private hospital room - room 311 - where Kyle was reported to be. It was in the children's ward.

"...you don't have to say anything, Natasha. I can see how they treat you. I can hear the words they call you. I feel every blow, every cut, and every burn they've ever put on you. And I can tell you that I can make it all go away. The physical pain, at least. Those scars, that hurt - I can make it go away. And I can make it so that they never do these things to you again."

"How do you know all that?" a young girl's voice came, sharp and accusing.

"That woman with the beautiful voice - did you hear her words earlier? About magic? About having a dragon for a best friend? About how she came here to help people? I'm the same as her. I know because I'm magic. And I'm here...to help you, Natasha. I can use magic to make your pain go away, and I can use magic to- to make sure it never happens again. Because that's the beauty of magic. It can do some of the most impossible things you could ever think of. If you think it's impossible to get away, to get help, to feel _safe and loved_...it's not. Magic can make that happen."

"How?"

"It did for me," Kyle's soft reply came. "I had...a bad mother, just like you. But magic gave me a new one. Gave me a new home. A _better_ one. And now here I am, and I can give you the same thing. You just have to tell me that it's...that it's okay."

"Ok." That single word was uttered so quietly. "Can you ask that woman with the dragon if it can eat them for me? That way, after, just in case...I won't ever have to see them again."

"Of course," Kyle responded. Annabelle heard a soft laugh. An easy laugh. _A real laugh_. "She likes me - I'm sure she'd be willing to lend me her dragon for a day. For you, Natasha."

Silence. Then it was replaced by Kyle's utterance of many healing incantations that Annabelle recognized - and more than a few that she didn't; it was just more evidence of how much more skilled and knowledgeable Kyle was compared to her in the matters of magic.

"How do you feel?" Kyle's voice came again. "A whole lot better, don't you?"

"Yes." The voice of Natasha was breathy with relief and shock. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. Now, I need to go see who else I can help here, just like you, so you keep resting in here for me okay? I promise you I'll come back in an hour. And, after you go to your new home, I'll visit you there too if you want."

"Ok."

Footsteps were heard, and then the door opened and Kyle stepped out. He looked at her in surprise. His cheeks flushed. He didn't say anything to her - just strode down the hall with purpose in his gait, and a wand in his hand.

Annabelle went after him. She caught up to him, and caught his arm in hand. He instantly froze up, startled as he turned to her. She let go and stepped back. Stepped away. "I'm sorry."

"What?" Kyle responded, irritation coloring his features. "We only have limited time here, I want to make every minute count."

"You promised to give that kid - Natasha - a new home. A better home. How are you planning on doing that?"

"I'll find it for her myself," said Kyle. He tapped a foot, glanced away. "I'll-"

"Use Legilimency on the new parents? See if they have any history of treating children poorly?" Annabelle ventured, trying to hold Kyle's gaze - he just kept looking anywhere but at her. "A magical background check, is that how you'd justify it? Find her a home, arrange that - fine, that's fine - but if you plan on mind controlling anyone to make the process happen for that girl, or invading the basic rights to privacy and-"

"That would go against your whole cause, your advocacy, blah blah," Kyle cut across her. He paused, glanced up and down the hall; he waved his wand, and Annabelle felt the telltale tingles of concealing charms being cast around them - sound, sight, perhaps. "I realize that. But _you_ realize _this_ : I'm not a part of your cause. I'm not your friend - we're strangers. We've met _twice_. I don't give a damn what you think is moral or just, or ethical. I'm going to do anything I can to make sure that that girl in that room back there gets the life she deserved from the start! And if you- if you try to stop me from doing that...then tell me what the hell that makes you? Tell me how the _hell_ you can call yourself moral, or just, or _good_ when you stop someone from getting a _child_ out of her own little hell! Tell me-"

"I was that girl!" Annabelle exploded. " _I was that girl, goddamnit! I told you -_ I told you - _and through all that, fuck, do you think I don't- do you think I'm not-_ " She cut herself off and whirled away. She threw herself against the nearest wall, drew back, and threw herself again. She slammed her fists against it and kicked at it-

A hand on her shoulder stopped her.

"Sometimes legal isn't right, sometimes right isn't legal - you know that," Kyle said, insistent - furious. His lips pressed together. The hand holding his wand was trembling. Now _he_ was the one trying to hold _her attention_. "Do you realize how many laws we're breaking _right now?_ And you want to have the nonexistent set of _balls_ to tell me to my face that _I can't use illegal means to help a little girl feel safe for once in her life?!_ " Kyle's grip on Annabelle was harsh, unyielding. His face was twisted, and his eyes were tear-stricken.

Annabelle brought her wand up and blasted Kyle back against the wall opposite her. He didn't raise his at her. "It's not about that. It's about not mind fucking people, and about _at least_ adhering to proper channels, and-"

Kyle slammed a foot down; Annabelle jumped. "So _fucking what if I don't go through_ _proper channels!_ Those proper channels fucking failed her to begin with! They didn't see it, they didn't- _no one ever saw it!_ " he finished, voice rising in pitch - so sudden - until it was strained to the point of breaking.

"I went through proper channels, and I got out of mine," Annabelle said, voice thick from a tight throat. "I told, and I- I was _helped_ , and I-"

"That clearly doesn't work for everybody, since _my experience says different!_ " Kyle shouted over her. "And what do people like _you_ do then? Where do you go, who do you go to? When you have no one and nothing? How do you fix that situation?"

"Obviously it's complicated, but you-"

"That's not a _fucking answer_!" Kyle yelled, slamming his fist into the nearest wall. "Give me an answer, a real answer, about how a kid out on the streets like me could have gotten into any kind of decent home, like the one you got for yourself, and the one _I am going to get for that girl_ , without using any illegal means! _Fuck- just- fuck you, we're right here, doing what we're doing, and you want to say we can't just pick a kid up and put them where they deserve to be placed and not give a damn about anything but that result?_ "

" _That's not what I'm fucking talking about!_ " Annabelle was screaming, frustration ripping her apart inside. She stalked right over to Kyle and grabbed his shirt in a fist, slammed him into the wall. " _What I'm fucking talking about is you, you don't get to just decide you're going to help a kid and damn the rest of the world! Not just let it burn, for fuck's sake, but go out of your fucking way to burn it down! You magic some papers through, you work out a deal with the parents, fine! Fine! But don't fucking think about mindraping people to get the process through, or to make sure the process doesn't reach them, just for her, because those are all living, breathing people just like you, and you don't screw with innocent people goddamnit! Do you get that? Do you understand me, Kyle? Tell me you do, tell me, or I swear I'll beat the shit out of you until you scream it out to me that you do-_ "

" _Stop it, mom!_ "

Annabelle was suddenly blown sideways down the hall like she'd been struck by a car. She flew, hit, rolled and came to a stop. She lay there a moment, hearing nothing but sobbing. She thought it was hers, but...it was Kyle's. She got to her feet again, aching and bruised. She winced, she tested her arms and her hips. She touched a hand to her head and came way with blood. Kyle was leaning against the wall, forehead to the plaster, with his arms over his head. "I'm sorry," she said, in trembling tones. She didn't move closer. "Kyle, listen to me. Just listen - please. Innocent people don't deserve to be hurt, or used in any way. They never do. Because _we never deserved it_. That was us, they're all us. They could be us. But they don't deserve to be us, and not because you make them that way. Maybe you think that they do deserve it, and maybe that's because you think _we_ deserved it on some level. I don't know. Or maybe you're doing it because, while they don't deserve it, you _want them to deserve it_ \- as some revenge type thing that you feel the need to act on."

"Whatever the case," Annabelle continued, sucking in a long breath. "Please don't. I'm asking you...just don't. Please. Get what you want, do what you want, but don't hurt people who don't deserve it just to get it. Break all the laws you want, throw off any government or society you feel like you have to, but don't...don't ever do anything that hurts innocent people. Your mother did that, that was _her_ \- but that's not _you_. Not if you don't let it be."

Kyle didn't respond. At least, not verbally; he disapparated with a loud _crack_ \- Annabelle flinched.

 _Shit._ Annabelle spent several minutes getting a hold of herself - steadying her breathing, wiping her eyes, etc - and then she went to find Adelyn. It took her over half an hour of wandering and checking in with random nurses she came across before she finally managed to find her.

"Adelyn," Annabelle began, on entering the room. "Kyle's gone. That leaves us one very talented, very powerful ally short - not that I'd put a cap on how many we should have here."

"Understandable," Adelyn replied, not looking away from the mid-fifties woman in the hospital bed whom she was attending to. "Pray tell, did the ex wife of yours say she was willing to put in an appearance?"

"We never actually got married," Annabelle corrected, transfiguring her favorite rock into her favorite chair again and falling into it with a heavy sigh. "But, I met with Lisa, yeah - and she told me she was too busy, and too well off in life to come and join me in throwing that all away. I understand her, I understand that, I guess, but..." She shook her head. "It still wasn't something I wanted to hear."

"How unfortunate for us," Adelyn said, making a _tssk tssk_ noise. "It seems everyone will just have to get really comfortable with spiders then..." She raised a hand, and gave Annabelle a sidelong look. On her lips appeared a sly smile. "Unless you know of a few others out there you could ask to come here and help us. We _really_ could use a few more hands on this - both figuratively, and _very_ literally. Now, if I recall, the night we first met, you seemed to have _quite_ the crew of spare hands hanging around with you...didn't you?"

"Gertrude, Anju and Oguk?" Annabelle responded, her mind drifting back to that night too. She'd given them all mirrortalkers, true, but unfortunately they hadn't spoken through them yet. She had reasoned that they would have used them by now if they really needed to get in touch with her - or if they really _wanted to_. They had difficult enough lives as it was, she knew, and she didn't want to burden or even offend them by making a social call on her own whim.

However, given they had pledged themselves to the movement, and given this was a momentous event and action on the part of the movement - and one made in the name of compassion and justice - then surely they would...if only Annabelle would ask...

Annabelle plunged her hand into her jacket and pulled out her mirrotalker. She held it up to her face. "Gertrude. Anju. Oguk." These three names said clearly, the mirror face shimmered, the handle vibrated, and then two vertical, cracked lines appeared in the glass. The three sections of the mirror face swirled, and then three separate images appeared to reflect back at Annabelle. Three different voices emitted from the mirror, all talking at the same time.

"Annabelle? Do you need something?" Gertrude's raspy voice came, concerned.

"Oh? It's you! If you're calling me now about our children, they're doing fine - they'll hatch any day now," Anju's response came quickly, in tones of assurance. "In fact, I was thinking about calling _you_ soon, to ask you if you'd be willing to be there for the hatching. I understand if you want to stay unattached, but..."

And Oguk's response was heard, louder than the other two; zir voice was full of warmth and excitement alike. "Ms. Potter - that is how your people signify respect, yes? - do you call upon me now to ask me to contribute to the cause I pledged to support for and alongside yourself?"

Then, three different voices all voiced their confusion at the sound of each other's.

"Anju? Oguk?" Gertrude spoke first. "Annabelle? You cracked my mirror. I'm not just seeing and hearing you, I'm seeing and hearing the other friends I made the night you came back to me. Or, am I the only one seeing this?"

"Sorry," Annabelle said quickly. "It's a special feature that my godfather added to my mirror - and so it carried over to your duplicates - he's a real marvel and a bit of a _tinkerer_ when it comes to magic. Anyway, listen, right now I could really use your help. All of you. It's for the movement. It's not a move to protect any nonhumans, sorry, but it _is_ a move to protect people who need it - nonmagic humans. We've blown a hole in the Statute, and we plan on tearing it down permanently once the day's over. Norberta is up in the skies, the international magical government has Aurors and other law enforcers trying to get through a barrier, and in a few hours I'm expecting a hundred or more magi-arachnids to pop up out of the streets and help protect the people we've got in here."

"I'll be there!" Gertrude was first to say, fierce in tone, and in a deeper pitch than was even _her_ usual. "Wherever there is," she added uncertainly. "Where are you?"

Annabelle gave her three friends the city name and street address; all three confirmed that they could work with that information in order to perform various types of unique apparition magicks to arrive there shortly.

"You're sure you want to do this?" Annabelle questioned Anju. "You're literally the last of your people. If you get hurt or killed here, I- Anju, _our kids_ won't have you there for them."

"But they'll have you," Anju responded, resolute. "I'd rather you raise them than ninety percent of the other people who came through that inn and came to me for a free fuck - or any other harpies around the globe. We're so few in numbers, and who they are, the lives they live and the things they call values...I wouldn't want my children to grow up with them - with that; it's not my community, it's not what _I am_. But you...with who you are and with what _you_ believe in, I'd love it if you could have at least a hand in their upbringing."

"All right," Annabelle accepted. "And, Anju, if...if something here _does_ happen to you, I promise you now that I will do my best to raise our kids how you'd want them to be raised." She turned her gaze from Anju's image to that of Oguk. "Are you prepared to-"

"Yes," Oguk interrupted.

Annabelle smiled. "Okay then. See you all soon." She deactivated her mirrortalker and stowed it away. She turned to Adelyn. "It would be great if you could just keep doing what you're doing. I'm going to go back to the lobby and make another announcement - update everyone on the situation - and then once Gertrude, Anju and Oguk show up I'll get them introduced before I...get this started."

"Best of luck," Adelyn said, waving an arm with utmost exaggeration.

Annabelle nodded, then she disapparated.

* * *

Several hours passed without anything eventful happening. At least, nothing _inside_ the hospital happened.

But the outside...

After checking in with Adelyn again, Annabelle apparated to the roof, and scanned the streets below. There were over fifty mages all clustered down there, trying to get through the barrier and the front doors. There was another fifty or so mages dedicated to lethal spellcasting toward an agile and deadly Norberta above them, who was taking swooping dives at them - dives filled with roaring, inferno breaths, and slashing claws and tail. A third grouping of fifty odd mages were creating a perimeter around the building, casting protective and concealment charms against every passing nonmagic person. Annabelle watched as a man shook his head, then approached closer to the mage gathering. His will was a bit too strong to be fooled by the magic - but it was still working on him, Annabelle could see that; he kept faltering, then stepping forward, hesitating and then getting over it again. A mage broke from her fellows and stalked right up to the man, brandishing her wand threateningly. Then she was leveling it at the man's face. The man who refused to be deterred by mental influences.

Annabelle apparated down to the street, appearing right behind the mage. She thrust her wand right up against the woman's back, and cast a Cutting Curse; the mage dropped like a stone, her body crumpling under itself. Annabelle seized the man's arm and disapparated with him. They reappeared in the lobby of the hospital. "I'm sorry," she said immediately. "You were about to be hurt, or worse - have your mind fucked with - just for being curious. If you stay in here, you'll be safe. I promise. And in a few hours, you might be able to go home without worrying."

Without waiting for a response, Annabelle apparated back to the roof. Just then, her ears caught a constant thumping noise, and her eyes sought its source: no less than three news helicopters. They were flying in fast, and high above even Norberta.

 _We're live on air,_ Annabelle thought, eyeing the distant figures of the camera operators standing in the open doorways of the helicopters' passenger areas. _Good._ She apparated back into the hospital lobby, and was greeted to utter pandemonium. The source? Three very distinct, _very_ _distinctly nonhuman_ figures standing around in the middle of the lobby.

"You all made it," Annabelle greeted her friends warmly. She dropped to her knees and kissed Gertrude on the lips: she hugged Anju, stroked her wing of an arm a moment; and lastly, she rammed her shoulder into Oguk's chest, grinning up at the towering orc the entire time. "Sorry for all the staring and pointing," she continued, in a low voice. "Please keep in mind that, to this particular type of human, all of you never were even thought to exist until today, besides in folklore and mythology that's survived and been passed down these past few hundred years in their societies."

"Understandable," Oguk spoke first. Zir tone was not one of discomfort, nor was there a trace of fear, anger, or disdain. In fact, there was something there that sounded a lot like _pleasure_ to Annabelle - she'd have to ask about that later. Oguk reached over zir shoulder and unsheathed a massive broadsword, with jagged edges and an aura of bluish frost. "Where are the human mages who seek to impose oppression upon these variants? I've brought with me the most ancient, most powerful enchanted blade of my clan to deal with them! Today, they will learn why my people have endured outside of and beyond their rule, and they will learn why they never should have caught our attention in this way."

"Right outside those doors," Annabelle informed, pointing. "There's over a hundred of them out there right now, Oguk. Please be careful - oh, and don't accidentally hurt Norberta, would you? She's my dragon best friend, the one I told you about before. I don't know if you remember?"

"A hundred mages against a single orc?" Oguk threw zir head back and _laughed_. Booming, wild laughter. "Such a battle hasn't been seen between our peoples in over a thousand years!"

"With good reason," Annabelle retorted. "We're not out to slaughter people, or start a war, please. Kill if you have to, but otherwise...show some mercy when you can afford to. That's all I ask."

"To do anything else would be to dishonor all that I am," Oguk assured. Ze flexed zir free arm, and cracked zir neck.

"Right." Annabelle turned back to Anju and Gertrude; she looked slightly down at Anju - and _a great deal lower_ at Gertrude. "Are _you two_ sure you're ready to go out there and do battle against overwhelming odds? I promise it won't be that way for too long - we'll get reinforcements once I signal for them - but for the next minute or two...yeah, it'll be us stalling against a hundred mages."

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't ready for this," Gertrude rasped, sounding nothing but certain. Dirty, stringy black hair was pushed out of her face, and a grin stole over her dried lips as she gazed up at Annabelle. "I don't hate humans or anything - I'm not fucked up like Teafa is - I'm here for you, and I'm here for the movement."

"The same is true for me," Anju agreed, flexing her wings and shifting on her talons. "Nothing more needs to be said. If we die for this cause and these people, then we die knowing we did what was right. And I can't think of a better reason to die than for freedom and for truth, and for the sake of helping others who need it. My pledge to the movement is as serious as the pledge I made to you the night we met, and the pledge I made to bring back my people."

"Okay, then," said Annabelle, nodding. She shed her jacket and dropped it on the floor. She took her wand out of her jeans. She lifted an arm and pulled back the sleeve, and gave Miranwe a close look. *Miranwe, are you awake? It's time. Time for what we planned on the way over here.*

Miranwe lifted a leg in a little wave. *I'm ready.*

*Good.*

*I trust that you'll keep me as safe as you can.*

*Yeah. That's a promise.* Annabelle looked at her friends, who were looking at Miranwe curiously - not with any sort of fear, like most humans would have. She switched back to english and told them, "I'm going to signal for those reinforcements, and then we're going out there." That said, she held her wand out in front of herself and began to utter a very special, very old incantation taught to her on the fly by Adelyn. To all appearances, nothing happened. Her wand glowed scarlet for a few moments, but that was it. But for Annabelle...she knew it had worked.

Annabelle took a deep breath, and then she looked around the lobby one last time. "It's starting now, everyone, so please remember to stay inside and to stay safe. If the assaulting mages breach the barrier, then...fight if you think you can. Otherwise, stay out of sight, stay back. And please remember that Adelyn - the vampire lady - as well as these three here now, the dragon outside, and the giant spiders that will be here soon _are all_ _on your side_." _Alright, here we go._ Annabelle crossed the lobby and stepped out the front doors.

* * *

"Annabelle?" Dean Thomas stood at the forefront of the small army of international mages. His eyes were wide. His face was pale as he took her in. He didn't lower his wand. "Annabelle Potter?" He lingered, then he set his jaw and adopted a professional tone. "Ms. Potter, surrender your wand and comply with all further commands and you won't be harmed. Work with us to get that barrier down, and we'll help you get away from whoever's in charge in there - whoever's blackmailed you, or threatened you, whatever is going on I promise you we can get you out of this safely. Is it one of them?" he added, gesturing toward Oguk, Anju and Gertrude. "Did you go to establish relations with another race, and end up being kidnapped? Held hostage? Is that what this is?"

Annabelle, for a moment, ignored Dean. She raised her wand to the sky and sent an orange jet of light flying up past Norberta, who was furiously engaged with two dozen mages down the block. Norberta twisted around in the air, gave Annabelle a longing look that the latter could see even from the distance, and then she flapped her mighty wings and soared up to land on the hospital roof; Norberta's long neck stretched out from the edge to peer down at the mages below her, her slitted eyes narrowed in total focus.

Now, Annabelle gave Dean her full attention. She responded to him, measured and confident. "No, Dean. That's not what this is. I appreciate the gesture, but what's going on here is something...something that needs to happen - just like what needs to happen for all the nonhumans in the world. Rights, equality, freedom, truth; they need all of these things, they deserve them, just like anyone does. Whether you're nonhuman, or nonbiological in origin, or nonmagic, you deserve all those things, just the same as the people who already have them in the world do - and the people who refuse to acknowledge or share these things with all peoples for whatever reasons they have. Bigotry, learned behaviors - things they just grew up with and never thought about changing - or out of fear or malice. Doesn't matter." Annabelle raised her wand again, and she stepped forward. "The only thing that matters, is that the oppression, the discrimination, the lies and the violations of so many natural rights on pure whim...it's time for it all to end. No if's, and's, or but's about it: it's wrong, it's always wrong, and it's _over_."

"I hear you," Dean spoke, in a casual tone, like they were kids again - just two teenagers hanging out together on the grounds at Hogwarts again. "I get it, Annabelle. I understand what you're trying to do - what you've been doing these weeks since graduating - and it's good. It's great, the- the activism, the getting in touch with people who...who shouldn't be ignored, or wronged for what they are. You've been doing good work. But this? What is this, Annabelle? This is...extreme. This is against dozens of laws! Norberta's been _killing people out here!_ Tearing them apart, burning them alive!"

"Yes, it is," said Annabelle, nodding. "And yes, _she has been_. But the laws as they stand now are wrong. They're immoral, unlawful in and of themselves. And the enforcement of those laws makes every single one of you complicit. It makes all of you just as immoral. And as long as you're all here to hurt these people, then Norberta is justified in defending them with appropriate force - which, she is; I saw more than a few fatal curses flying her way. But that's besides the point. Point is: realize that you're wrong, that it's wrong to treat people this way. No matter if they're nonhuman or nonmagic. You're the ones in the wrong here. You're here to hurt, to violate, and Norberta and I, my friends, we're all just here to protect them from that harm. _Realize it, Dean_."

"I do realize that," Dean replied easily. "Come on, Annabelle, of course I do - it's _me_. I have nonmagic parents. I understand that the weight of the secrets and the lies...I know it all hurts. Us, our coworkers, our friends in the nonmagic communities. I know that - I do - but this isn't the answer. The answer is to sit down, to call meetings, to talk to politicians and to- to go slow and easy. I can see how you could believe what you do, and how you could believe that you and Norberta are justified in the actions you've taken today, but you can't just...force this. Not like this. Not today. You have to change minds, you have to have _discourse_. You don't just blow a hole in everything."

"And what happens then?" Annabelle asked. "We wait, we talk, we have meetings and political discussions. And all the while, all the people _keep on suffering_. Why is that right, why do you want want that? Why is that acceptable, large scale, when we don't just hang back and watch someone keep being beaten or raped on the small scale? We jump in, we get them out of the situation, and we help them - _and then_ we wait for law enforcement and judges and courts to play out their roles afterward. After the people being hurt have been removed from an immediate, harmful situation."

"Annabelle, this isn't the place for a debate," Dean retorted, looking pained. "That's- look, this is what I mean. If you want to talk about this stuff, then let's get this barrier down, let people out of there, and let's get you a meeting with the International Mage Embassies. But don't- don't do this. This isn't the way to change things."

"The barrier is up, and the people are in there _because of you!_ " Annabelle yelled. " _We're here doing real good, we're saving lives and healing the sick, the injured!_ Little kids with fucking cancer don't have to be stuck in a bed anymore; a blind man gets to see again; someone without the use of their legs can stand up and walk again! Ralph Finch, Aaron Young, Leslie Slater - _people_. This is compassion, this is _good_ , and this is _right!_ What are _you_ here for? What are _you_ going to do? Stop us from _helping our fellow beings?_ Tell me what you're going to do! Are you going to go in there, go right up to some little boy and magic a life-threatening tumor right back into his head and wipe his memories?! Are you going to look a woman in the eyes and _re-snap_ her spine?! Who the _fuck are you?! What the fuck are you, any of you, that you can do this and still sleep at night?! Call yourselves good, decent, moral, anything that's not sick and evil, and wrong in this world?! TELL ME WHAT THE HELL YOU PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE!_ "

In the wake of Annabelle's roaring, utter raving, there was silence. Birds, insects, cars and sirens and the helicopters above all filled that void.

"Sir, I know the barrier is a problem, but we could capture her and-" a woman started; but Dean cut her off with a raised hand.

"No." Dean's gaze held Annabelle's. Pain was now agony. Clear, dry eyes were now shimmering. He shoved his wand back in his pocket. He turned away from Annabelle, toward the immediate row of mages. "I'm not doing this, Sofie. What would be the point anyway? It's done, she's done it, the secret is out, and the whole world is watching. Live TV," he added, gesturing up at the helicopters. "And she's right. I can't be here, can't have come here to do what we're going to do, and still call myself a good person. She's the one doing good - helping people, using what she has in her. And you know, my parents have always told me, 'Those who have the power to do good, have the responsibility to do good.' They thought that if you stood by and let bad things happen...or if you were a part of it...well, I'm not going to be a part of it. Not here, not today."

Dean looked down at the ground. He took a breath. He took his wand out again; and he pointed it at the other mages. He stepped back, until he was standing with Annabelle. "I'm not going to be a part of this, and I'm not going to let it happen either. My parents would hate me for the rest of my life if I carried through with why we all came here - if they had to sit at home and _watch it happen_ on live television."

Sofie looked at Dean for a long moment. "Dammit," she sighed. She shook her head; lowered her own wand and stepped over to join Dean. "Mine would hate me too," she said quietly. "They're not watching me on broadcast, but they _are_ watching me from somewhere up in the sky."

Annabelle swept her gaze across the rest of the mages. She spoke to them, breathing heavily, and doing her best to regain a calm tone. "All of you have fifteen seconds to either leave, or choose to do the right thing here today. If you're still standing here after those fifteen seconds are up, if you haven't made a decision, then you're all going to die. Whether it's by my hand, or by Norberta's, or anyone else who's here to keep these people safe. If you're here to kidnap and hurt them, then you die today for trying. Because you had the choice to stop, to leave - _to just not go through with it!_ "

"Auror Thomas, Officer Wilde," spoke another mage, taking a step forward from the rest. "If the two of you don't take Ms. Potter down and get back over here, right now, then you're both going to be considered to be aiding a terrorist."

"I can live with that," Dean responded, setting his jaw. "The terrorist's only crime, to me, seems to be helping her fellow human beings, and protecting them from abuse and harm at the hands of...others who arrived on the scene to _reverse that help_. Who's the bad guy in this scenario, _sir_?"

"The Statute is ruined!" the mage snarled, raising his wand. "She's willing to assault and kill all of us! She has an entire hospital locked down, preventing patients _outside_ from getting in and getting that treatment she cares so much about providing! She has a dragon waiting in the skies to burn us alive - and _was_ , not two minutes ago! Your fellow LEO's are _dead_ in these streets, mutilated and made living charcoal around you, and you're really going to stand there with _her?_ A psychotic terrorist?!"

"I am," said Dean steadily.

Sofie swallowed hard. She raised a quivering wand. "Me too - asshole. 'Cause I'm not going to be the asshole myself here."

Several rapid fire _cracks_ and _pops_ sounded in the silence; the mages all shifted ranks somewhere near the back.

A distinctive noise, like rustling sand, began to fill the streets. More and more, louder and louder, overlapping. Then, the street began to crack and burst, as little explosions started going off beneath the asphalt. High, louder clicking noises joined with the explosions and the running sand, and then the latter two sounds faded to leave only the clicking.

That was when the screaming started. Spells began flashing, and the mages all began turning their attention away from Annabelle and her friends and allies. Instead, they turned their attentions to the large magi-arachnids streaming up out of the ground in seeming endlessness.

Nyllia's tribe had made it.

 _All right, time's up._ Annabelle flicked her wand at the sky, and sent up a green jet of light; Norberta came soaring down from the rooftop again with a mighty roar. Annabelle waved her wand. The glass of dozens of windows on nearby buildings all began to burst outward, and then they surged and became piercing glass tendrils that were dozens of feet long. They all stretched down into the street and found their targets; they stabbed into skulls, pierced necks, impaled chests. They took many mages up into the air, slamming them into building exteriors and making them bleed or flat out die from incredible blunt force trauma - alternatively, some of these glass tendrils merely held the mages against the sides of the buildings so that magi-arachnids could crawl up the walls and kill them in their utter helplessness.

Annabelle waved her wand again, and over two dozen vehicles spontaneously became cheetahs and rhinos, aggressive and powerful and hyper-fast - and entirely under her command. They had to be: she didn't want to risk innocent lives by just letting the transfigured animals go wild. She mentally commanded them all to assault the mages that _she_ identified in her thoughts to be targets, and to pay no one else any attention whatsoever. They did just that for her, and the street was filled with shrill screams of terror and agony, as throats were ripped into by cheetahs, and bones were crushed by the weight of full grown rhinos charging into and pinning their prey before stomping them into the ground. Whoever wasn't dead from this treatment were soon killed by magi-arachnids.

She apparated behind a distracted mage and slapped her palm against the back of the woman's neck, then disapparated away to leave the woman standing there in confusion. Three seconds later, the woman sank to the ground and became still. Annabelle apparated over to her again and cupped her palm against the back of the corpse's neck; Miranwe crawled back into Annabelle's hand, and the latter apparated away with the former safely in her grasp again.

Annabelle blocked one, two, three incoming curses after another - reflected a Stunner back at someone - slashed her wand at the closest mages in retaliation; she used a deadly severing curse. She cast a Killing Curse, followed immediately by a Blasting Curse: several mages flew in all different directions, screaming as their limbs were torn off.

Two mages began to cast spells at Annabelle nearly simultaneously, but they were promptly tackled by two magi-arachnids - and then dogpiled by six more.

Annabelle heard a long, drawn out scream that had her looking skyward a moment; Anju had caught a mage in her talons and dropped them from many, many stories up. She watched Anju dive down, sweep past a mage and seize the man's wand arm with her talons, and rip it off with a great flap of her wings and a magically aided ascension of insane force.

Annabelle blocked a Stunner, and found herself in a back and forth with a wizard who looked positively murderous. The wizard's efforts were cut short by sudden assistance from Gertrude, who leapt up onto his back, wrapping legs around middle and an arm around his neck, and used her free hand to reach around and tear the man's throat out. Gertrude released the man and dropped behind him; she gave him a kick square in the back that sent him down on his face in his dying throes. Gertrude didn't stick around to talk to Annabelle - she jumped away, like a spring-loaded toy, and came down on a witch's head and began repeatedly slashing at her face and eyes with her claws.

Annabelle held back rising, sudden bile, and turned away from Gertrude's handiwork to seek out other opponents for herself. In her childhood, Ycu had always impressed upon her that it didn't _matter_ how you attacked a threat, how you killed a predator - had always seen human ideas on the matter as being as perplexing to her as a caveman trying to understand quantum physics - because in the end _you were still killing it._ Just as long as when you killed something, you did it quickly, you did it efficiently, and you moved on.

So Annabelle moved on. She set aside her _human_ thoughts on such notions, just like Ycu would have wanted from her, and she moved on to kill another with cool efficiency and nothing else - not a doubt, not a worry, not a thought spared for the _method_ of her own kills.

She fought through six mages, individually and together, then killed several more, whirled and apparated and fought and struck everyone within reach, side by side and taking advantage of her allies' own strikes, just as _they_ would take advantage of _her_ strikes. But all the same, a point came when she found herself being surrounded by over a dozen mages. They were firing spells at her from near point blank, and she was reflecting and absorbing and stumbling under it all, barely holding out and with no allies in immediate vicinity to even help her. She was so pressed with it all that she dare not even try to switch from pure defense to any kind of offense. She didn't even have _a single second_ to concentrate and pull off an apparition! They weren't intent on giving her that second at all.

Annabelle was starting to sweat, gritting her teeth and breathing heavily, starting to get desperate, and _she couldn't hold out against this any more-_

" _Keresa, nati tuh! Esta ra'n!_ " a high-pitched voice boomed suddenly, reverberating through the air in a way that was physically painful for Annabelle and her ears.

The mages battering away at Annabelle from all sides...well, some of them hesitated a brief second. Enough for Annabelle take that lull and readjust her footing and restrengthen her shields.

Something very small and glittering (and _familiar_ ) came shooting across the sky, swooped low over everyone's heads - passed right over Annabelle! Left in the small flier's wake there were sparkling green particles falling from the sky, thick and widespread as heavy snowfall. It all coated everyone within seconds. The mages covered in these particles began to cough and wretch, double over and outright fall to the ground. Blood poured from eyes, noses, ears, and mouths all. Several seconds of this was all it took for dozens of mages to go still in the streets.

Which provided Annabelle with a much appreciated room for breathing, recuperating, and a quick apparition back inside the hospital lobby. A faint _pop_ followed right after her appearance in the lobby, and a shower of blue particles burst into existence in the air in front of her face.

And there, hovering in the air before Annabelle, was a very familiar fairy - transparent sparkling white wings, a flowing green gown of leaves, and a soft, slender figure that definitely _did not_ match up with the personality of the soul within it. Eyes so brightly green, hair so glowing and swishing orange...beauty and radiance that meant nothing to the one who held such features.

"Confiance?" Annabelle breathed, unspeakably grateful at this appearance by one of her first, real childhood friends in a time of great need. Though, of course, seeing as it was _Confiance_...Annabelle's heart still held a smidgen of wariness. "What are you doing here?"

"Saving your huge, fat, _really cute butt!_ " Confiance fluttered around Annabelle's head, stopped in front of her face and grabbed hold of her nose and kissed the tip of it. She flew backwards and performed an effortless backflip. "Can I get a thank you or something like that out of you? You were cornered out there, and if I hadn't laid on the toxic dust they'd have taken you down!"

"I'm pretty sure you killed more than a few of my friends and allies out there too," Annabelle said quietly, shaking her head.

Confiance shrugged her miniature shoulders. "Oh, don't worry about it. What's that human saying? Can't make an egg without breaking some other eggs?"

Annabelle took a deep, careful breath. "Thank you for showing up for me. You're...the last person I'd ever have expected to see here, for me. But I'm glad you're here, no matter what. Confiance, listen to me very carefully: No more toxic dust. Okay? Do whatever you want, kill anyone you want, steal whatever you want - I don't care - just don't kill anyone we're here to protect, or anyone who's here to help us protect them. Just go after the mages in the official-looking robes, and no one else. If you don't - well, Confiance, don't make me threaten you, because unlike when I was a little girl I can make _very good_ on my threats now."

Confiance gave a rare, serious look and a nod. Then she threw up a wacky salute, chattered out a hasty, "Got it, boss!" and fluttered out the hospital's front doors by zooming right through the glass itself without giving a damn.

Annabelle took some more deep breaths, pushed sweaty, sticky hair out of her face, tightened her grip on her wand, and apparated back out into the midst of the battle.

* * *

 _"Annabelle - wherever you are - I don't know if you've looked out a window lately, but our barrier has just been taken down, and the mages are on the way in."_

The voice of Adelyn echoed throughout the hospital, announcing the change in the battle.

 _All right, new plan!_ Annabelle thought on hearing Adelyn's words. She ducked and weaved, blocked and reflected spell after spell as she was forced back down a hallway, along with a half dozen people she was ushering along. She ran over to the nearest window and sent out a distinctive, emerald jet of light into open sky - Adelyn's words were true; there was no purple shimmer anymore around the building exterior. A roar echoed in the distance in response. She motioned the patients and Nurse Amelia Ontario further back down the corridor behind her, then turned her wand on a window and turned the glass to dust. She ran back the way she'd come and threw up several different barriers, along with a few hasty concealment charms. A great gust of wind and a mighty growl, followed by a loud crash cut through the sounds of battle. Norberta had arrived; she was hanging onto the exterior of the hospital with her great claws embedded in its walls of thick, sturdy brick.

[What do you need me here for?] Norberta asked, quick and concerned as she brought her long neck down and peered into the corridor with a single slitted cat eye.

Instead of answering Norberta, Annabelle looked to the hospital patients, and Nurse Ontario. "This is Norberta - I was there the day she was born, she's been my best, most loyal friend ever since - and I need all of you to get on her back and let her take you far away from here. Someplace safe, and secret. Less people in here means less people to defend, and we'll know you're all safe. I promise you all that she's entirely harmless, and incredibly friendly, and just _full_ of empathy and compassion and-"

"Okay," Nurse Ontario interrupted, nodding, her jaw set. She glanced down the corridor, where Annabelle's layer of shields were being barraged still - and starting to break down and fade. "Ride a dragon out of here? Okay. My priority is their safety, and if this will do that, then I'll do it."

"Get on, then, and be sure to secure a proper hold on her spikes," Annabelle replied. She met eyes with Norberta, tried for a brief little smile. [Take them out across the ocean until you hit-]

[Oh, I know where to go - I just can't believe I _am._ ] Norberta shook her head in a very human way. [Not to mention, some of these patients are males, so I'm not sure we'll get the best greeting from the-]

Annabelle's barriers evaporated, and several curses came flying down the corridor. Blind curses - her concealment charms were still in effect - but they would still be a threat if any of them happened to connect. Annabelle whirled and threw up another, single barrier, as well as shot a Killing Curse back down the corridor at her pursuers for good measure.

[I know - just go,] Annabelle said quickly. [We'll work it out later!]

Annabelle helped the patients up onto Norberta's back, checking and double checking that they had hold of her spikes - cast a multitude of temporary sticking charms on their bodies where they had any physical contact with Norberta at all for good measure.

"Ms. Potter, hold it right there!"

Annabelle raised her wand and turned to face the mages who had torn down her concealment charms. She put herself directly in front of the window, and conjured up a floating, physical, yet translucent shield with the appearance of beautiful crystal. She gave a half glance over a shoulder; Norberta had detached from the building, and was soaring out over the few blocks she had to clear to reach the ocean's shore. A few mages out on the streets below cast spells up at Norberta, but she dipped a wing and avoided them easily enough. Annabelle watched her go with utter relief, then returned her gaze to the mages coming down the corridor.

Annabelle twirled her wand to dismiss her shield and cast out a curse, but stopped herself short as several things happened in quick succession: One, a loud _pop_ filled the corridor, echoed throughout; two, some sort of tall, pale _being_ of feminine figure appeared in the middle of the hallway; and three, the eight mages in pursuit of Annabelle all began to scream and stagger as they were torn apart layer by layer.

First the clothing went, then the outermost skin, then the next down from there, then the muscles, tendons, veins and arteries - nothing was left at the end of this rapid process but skeletons. Pearly white, clean skeletons laying on the floor. Even their wands were eaten away at by some unseen force, reduced to nothingness. No ash, no particles left behind, no magical residue, just...nothing.

This _being,_ this _woman_ turned to face Annabelle, and Annabelle couldn't help but draw a sharp breath as she laid eyes on her properly; Annabelle _recognized this woman._ It was Daphne Greengrass. Daphne, who didn't look, on the whole, at all like the woman - the girl, the _best friend_ \- Annabelle had once known, but who still retained very recognizable features.

Daphne stood in the corridor, still as a statue, with her arms at her sides and her legs held tight together. She was stark naked. Daphne's whole figure seemed almost out of proportion, so tall and lanky was she. Like she'd been stretched, like some cartoon. Her limbs were twice as long as they should have been, and her height was highly abnormal - she was easily seven or eight feet tall. Her skin was deathly white. Her veins stood out against her skin, pure black. There were black and red lines across her body, along with scarlet symbols that squirmed and pulsed. Her hair was as long as her body, and snow white. Her eyes had no pupils, and they were glossy black, like Miranwe's exoskeleton. Her nails were several inches long, and sharpened at the ends into claws.

"D-Daphne?" Annabelle spoke, taking a step forward. She swallowed, hard, and reaffirmed her grip on her wand. Took two more steps. "Daphne, are you- can you talk? Can you...what do you need? A hospital - not this one, obviously - or a bed to sleep in? Were you hurt? Were you...Daphne, what's happened? Where have you been? Come on, we can talk. It's Annabelle. You're safe, you're okay, and it's me. Daphne..." She took several more steps closer, holding out a trembling hand. "Daphne, please, it's okay, you're fine, whatever's happened we can-"

Daphne's black eyes vibrated in their sockets; her head jerked left, then right, before focusing on Annabelle. She was _really seeing her_. The black and red lines and strange symbols all lit up, burned bright, and a shimmering, translucent black wave rippled outward from Daphne's body. It passed over Annabelle's hand, enveloped it; and then Annabelle screamed.

She screamed, yanked her hand out of that disturbed air and stumbled backwards. Her hand was deteriorating before her eyes, shriveling and paling, skin and muscle was dissolving - it was dying right before her eyes. And it _hurt_. Annabelle brought her wand to bear on her decaying hand, and began to utter every healing spell she could remember. She was chanting one that Adelyn had taught her, when finally something worked, and the injury started to heal. The decay was halted, and reversed. She kept on it, kept at it, but at some point the healing just _stopped working_. Annabelle was left with a partially ruined hand, sickly in color and with patches missing here and there. It was totally mangled.

"Daphne!" Annabelle said loudly, raising her wand. But she didn't go any closer. Not this time. "You hurt me! You hurt me, and I'm going to assume you didn't mean to - I'm going to _assume_ that you're not in your right mind, and that you're hurting too. You want help? You need help? I'm going to give that to you, all right? Whether you want it or not. Because you're- you're still my best friend, _my first human friend_ , and I still love you. Do you hear me? I just have an important situation to deal with right now, but I'll get to you after, I promise! _Stupefy!_ "

Daphne's whole body shuddered violently; her head twisted at an obscene angle. The symbols lit up again, then died down in an instant. Daphne's white lips parted. Her black eyes went wide. Annabelle's Stunner stopped dead in the air between them, strained and struggled - and then it shot forward, continued on and passed through into the dark air...and it _died_. Dissolved into nothing, just like the flesh of the mages who were now skeletons.

 _Shit._ Annabelle cast another Stunner, followed immediately by a Cutting Curse, and then a Blasting Curse, and finally: a curse of dark blue flames meant to loop around Daphne to ensnare her like a lasso. None of the spells took affect; every single one met that dark air, and every single one evaporated within it.

Daphne's lips twisted into a deep frown, like she was offended, or upset at the assault. Maybe she was.

"Daphne..."

" _Ms. Potter, put your wand down, now! And you - whoever you are, if you're with her too, you come with us without a fight!_ "

Daphne's gaze stayed on Annabelle. " _Help you,_ " she said, in a voice that echoed faintly, and had a distorted quality to it. The dark field faded. She apparated, and then her long arm was ramming through the back of a mage and taking their heart out. She grabbed the skull of another mage, and just squeezed their head in her hands until blood and cracking and... Annabelle had to turn away; she only looked again once all the sounds had gone away.

"Helped you," Daphne said, in a voice of pride. "Love you."

"Yes," Annabelle replied. "Daphne, I...I need you to-" She glanced at the nearest door, nearest room. "-I need you to come with me, come in here, let's go, and you stay there. Okay? Come on. You need to hide, you need to be quiet, right in here. Please? For me?"

"Hide? Hide ugly? Hide... _my ugly?_ " Daphne's clawed hand came up, and a fingertip pressed into her own pale chest.

Annabelle shook her head, and she stepped closer to Daphne. She held out her damaged hand, and stopped just short of passing it through the dark magic field. She tilted her head far back, and met Daphne's high, glossy black gaze. "No, no, Daphne - this isn't...this isn't about how you...how you look now, or...whatever happened to you. I just- I just- Daphne, there's a lot of danger here, this is the worst time you could have picked to show up again, and I need you to _stay safe!_ Because you're my best friend, and I've missed you, and I love you, and I don't want you to get hurt here. So please...I need you to hide for me. Just hide, okay? Hide, and wait, and stay quiet, and I promise I will come back for you. I will talk to you, I will get you someplace, somewhere, that you can get help. All of this? All of you? We'll fix it, we'll make you better again, I swear. Just please, please...just hide for me now."

"Love me still?" Daphne's pale lips parted. Her head tilted to one side. "Best friends still?"

"Yes, yes! Daphne, we're still best friends, I promise! This doesn't change that, and..." _And Egypt doesn't change that, not until I know whether or not that was even really you_ , Annabelle continued on to herself in silence. Out loud, she finished with, "I'm here for you, Daphne. I'm here."

" _Hide,_ " Daphne spoke, in a tone of agreement. Those symbols of hers lost their glow, stopped moving over her figure, and the dark field collapsed. Daphne's long arm came up, and a stretched, skeletal hand seized onto Annabelle's. "Hide me."

Annabelle started for the door, and Daphne allowed herself to be pulled along with her. Daphne had to stoop to get through the doorway. Annabelle dragged her over to the bed and pushed her down onto it. "Okay, Daphne, stay here. Hide, remember? Don't leave this room until I come back."

"Stay," Daphne confirmed. She was looking at the bedsheets, running her hands over them. "Soft...cold...like soft, hate cold...so cold..."

Annabelle watched Daphne with a tight throat and stinging eyes. She pressed her lips together and took a long breath through her nose. Then she strode from the room and shut the door behind her. She waved her wand at the door, began casting protective and concealment charms all around it - and around the room itself in a radius. Included among these charms was also an anti-apparition charm, just...just in case. Satisfied with her quick work, Annabelle ran down the corridor in search of someone else to protect.

* * *

Down two entire floors and on the other side of the hospital from Daphne's location, Annabelle fought her way through two teams of six mages to reach several patients who had unsuccessfully barricaded themselves in a ward.

Three magi-arachnids came barreling down the corridor, running on walls and ceiling all, and threw themselves at the mages. One mage was killed by the sharp, stabbing limbs of a magi-arachnid - she was impaled through the chest several times, and then a final time in the throat. Another managed to cast a deadly curse that threw the magi-arachnid off him, and set them ablaze with purple fire that left residual flames on whatever it touched. The third magi-arachnid never got the chance to do any damage, as they took a very powerful Blasting Curse to the mandibles that had their guts and limbs flying everywhere.

Annabelle mourned the two magi-arachnids immediately, instantly, and she turned that grief into greater focus and sharper attacks that killed several mages within seconds of each other. She slashed her wand and materialized a glowing white rope from the end of it. She used this magic, deadly whip of hers to ensnare a mage by her legs; a hard _jerk_ of the whip and the enemy witch was down on the floor screaming without her legs to stand on anymore. A quick _snap_ and she was dead, caught in the throat by burning tip. Annabelle snapped the whip across the chest of a wizard, gouging a burning path through his ribs, lungs, and a portion of his heart. She whirled the whip around and decapitated another wizard by capturing his neck and giving a hard _pull_.

A witch hurled a Cutting Curse at Annabelle, rage written all over her face; Annabelle snapped her whip up and deflected the spell into the ceiling with it. The witch froze up, rage turning to fear. Annabelle took her life with a slash across her face, tearing an inch-and-a-half deep gash through her skull.

Annabelle slashed, ensnared, and killed everyone around her. She had the assistance of the surviving magi-arachnid throughout, as well as gained further assistance from half a dozen more magi-arachnids toward the end that helped speed things along.

And then the corridor was quiet again.

 _Thank you, Albus, for teaching me that,_ Annabelle thought, dissipating the magic whip, and stepping through the door into the room of huddled patients. Among them was Helena Dark, and a very young boy whom Annabelle assumed had to be the woman's son - Jesse, she recalled the name as having been given earlier that day.

"Helena, is everyone in here doing okay? No one's hurt, or needs medical treatment for...what they were here for to begin with?"

"Everyone's fine, we're all fine," Helena said quickly. "A few more seconds and we wouldn't have been, but...you showed up, and- and so did- so did-" Wide eyes and a tense face regarded the magi-arachnids who had scuttled into the room behind Annabelle.

"Yes - sapient, magical, big spiders," Annabelle spoke, calm and casual - deliberately so. She dropped down beside the nearest magi-arachnid, and reached out to give their exoskeleton a few exaggerated pats and strokes. "They're all fine, see? Here to help keep everyone safe, and they're not going to hurt anyone who doesn't try to hurt them first. They're actually a really solitary lot, living underground over in Egypt. They came over here to help because I asked them to - I'm friends with their...president, you'd say over here? She's a really great lady - real beautiful too. Anyway, point is..." She tilted her head and stared into a few of the eight blinking, black eyes of the magi-arachnid she had hand on. *Hey, what's your name, please? I'd like it if you and at least two others could stay in here and protect these people personally. I'm going to put up some protective enchantments on the door, but if those get broken down and broken through...could you please be ready to keep them safe?*

*Inna,* spoke the magi-arachnid, in flanging tones and a pitch that immediately denoted femininity in Annabelle's mind. *I'll stay here for them. I'll ask two others to stay with me. The rest can leave with you to find more kills.*

*Okay, thank you, Inna,* Annabelle said, with _heartfelt._ She stood, and looked at the humans. She smiled. "All right, Inna here - this one - she's going to stick around and protect you all if any mages break through into here again. I'll be casting some spells to make it a _lot_ harder to get in than your physical barricade of furniture did, but they could still get through with time, effort, and skill. So...just stay quiet, stay together, and just trust Inna here. She's just interested in keeping you safe, same as me. Hell, if it will make you more comfortable with her, try asking yes or no questions with her - get a conversation going; blink once for yes, twice for no kind of thing going on between you. She's as smart, and aware, and emotionally capable as you or I."

"All right," Helena said, with a shaky sort of nod as she set her eyes on Inna. She hesitated, swallowed, then - she began to speak in slow, cautious tones to the magi-arachnid. "Thank you? For this, for protecting my child. I..." She glanced at Annabelle. "Does she- does she _get_ english? When you talked to her, you were...clicking and hissing, like she was. Is that...a giant spider language, or...?"

"It's complicated, on my end of things," Annabelle replied. "Among themselves, they have their own languages, and their own regional dialects and the like, but the way I'm even able to speak to them and understand them is by way of a magical, sort of catch-all language that...interprets and translates any and all languages they have into a basic one I can use and understand myself." She shook her head. "But, on _her_ end of things? Yeah, she understand english just fine."

Helena nodded. Gave Inna a long, pondering look. "Okay then," she murmured.

"Okay," Annabelle repeated, taking backward steps toward the door; all but three of the magi-arachnids scurried out of the room before she reached it. "Just - yeah - stay in here, stay safe, all of you, and let Inna and her siblings handle things if anybody gets in."

Another room down, more people safe. Annabelle safeguarded the room, as she had Daphne's, then she moved on again.

* * *

Annabelle breathed. In and out. Heavy. Shallow. Sweat poured down her face, stuck her hair to her forehead and her cheeks. She eyed the two dozen odd hitmages, the obliviators on standby, and the international assault forces from behind her shield. They'd all cornered her in an upper ward waiting room after some chasing and some fighting along the way.

Now, Annabelle was trapped. She'd tried apparating away, first thing, but hadn't been successful; the government forces seemed to have caught onto her tactics finally, and they had evidently cast an anti-apparition charm on the area.

Annabelle ran through every option, every spell in her head, and tried to come up with _something_ that could get her out of this one. But...nothing. At least, nothing that wouldn't be risking the lives of patients, friends and allies. She couldn't go too big, too powerful, not here, not with her goal being what it was. She was limited, restrained and handicapped, and it was because of her own self. She was frustrated with herself over it - a not unfamiliar occurrence in her life.

 _Okay, Annabelle, so no Fiendfyre, no Sapphire Mist, no Junosink'ing, no...but what else can I do, then? Nothing else is going to get me past so many opponents at once! I can't do this, I can't- dammit! But it can't end here, I can't get taken like this. Too many people need help, too many people...but what if I just hurt_ one person _to get out of this? One person I'm already really good at hurting?_

Annabelle heaved a ragged, harsh sigh, dropped her chin and stared at the floor beneath her feet.

"Ms. Potter, you're done," a wizard said clearly. "Just drop the wand, and come with us. Enough death has happened here today as it is, don't make us have to add you to the list of casualties."

Annabelle lowered her wand half way. She breathed. Sweat dropped from her face, hit the floor with heavy splats. Her wand hand fell completely to her side, tip pointed at the floor. She closed her eyes. She focused her thoughts, and the incantation rose up in her mind to be cast. _Confringo!_

The floor beneath her feet exploded upward, blowing apart her legs and bombarding her lower half with shrapnel. She fell right down through the opening, fell down to the next floor under. Annabelle wasn't done yet. Screaming and crying, gasping, she threw herself onto her side and jabbed her wand tip onto the floor beside herself, and she cast the Blasting Curse a second time. She fell a second time, down another floor. She nearly landed right on top of Adelyn, who was in full vampiric form, slashing her claws and tearing out throats with her teeth, and leaping off walls with speed and agility that was difficult to even keep track of.

Of course, that might have been some trouble caused by Annabelle's horrendous physical state.

Her second Blasting Curse had taken her left arm, shattered some of her ribs, maybe damaged a lung? She wasn't too sure about anything that was going on with her body now.

"Annabelle?!" Adelyn rushed over to her side in a blur, picked her up in her arms and then started to run with her. Annabelle lolled in her arms, feeling sick and dizzy, and starting to get cold? Adelyn took Annabelle into a random room and lay her out on a bed, flat on her back. Annabelle watched Adelyn begin to quickly cast protective charms around the room. When Adelyn was finished, she sped back over to Annabelle's bedside in a heartbeat, and began chanting out spells in a language Annabelle didn't recognize.

Annabelle's vision cleared, her pain eased, slowly and over many minutes. She began to breathe normally again - her ribs were repaired. She looked down at herself, and saw a shining silver replacement of a limb coming out of her left arm stump. The same was true for her legs. These silvery limbs were rippling and shifting, but a few seconds gone by and they became solid. Real. They had weight to them, and...sensation, to some extent. Annabelle lifted her silver arm, ran her right hand over it - she felt the contact, same as she would through physical nerve endings. But it was...different. Muted. Less. She sat up, pushed herself up with her metal arm, and reached down to touch her metal legs and toes with her real right hand. They were different, too, in that muted way of sensation.

"It doesn't feel right, does it?" Adelyn spoke. "It's distant? I'm sorry; that happens when the spells are performed either incorrectly, or when it's not given the proper time to go through the whole process. Which, given where we are and what we're doing here, I just don't have the time to dedicate to it. I'm sorry," she said again, her pale face shining with remorse. "Were we to have more time, I could give you the full range of sensation - hot and cold included - or even just go all the way past this method and give you perfectly biological replacements, flesh and blood down to the bone. But, we just don't have the time."

Annabelle swung her metal legs off the bed and stood. She wobbled - corrected herself and caught the nightstand with her silver arm. "Can't worry about it right now - no time. Let's get back to it." She started off across the room, uncertain and uncoordinated to a degree. She fell against the door, yanked it open. She raised her wand with her flesh and blood hand, and cast an immediate Killing Curse at one of the three mages standing there trying to dismantle the protections.

It seemed as if Adelyn had given Annabelle's magic-metal limbs a durability and strength comparable to her own vampiric levels of durability and strength - several times that of any normal human.

Annabelle slammed her metal fist into a mage's face, causing a total collapse of bone structure. She grabbed their throat and hurled them bodily across ten feet of open space. She kicked a wizard in the chest, and several cracks were heard as he fell to the floor and began puking up blood. She apparated, slashed her wand when she reappeared, slitting the throat of a hitmage. She felt a burning pain in her stomach, and she looked down to see a two inch chunk missing from it, allowing blood to rush out.

 _Splinched: that's not good. But it can't be helped._

She apparated away to another mage; she grabbed the woman by the throat and squeezed until it gave. Annabelle felt a twisting in the side of her face, and her metal hand shot up to the wound. Her fingers pushed into the side of her own jaw, where bone and cheek skin were missing. She felt her own gums and teeth. Felt the wind on it. She apparated, and she severed the spine of another wizard; her vision on the left side blinked out, and stayed dark, as anguish exploded there. Her eye, and part of her forehead - bone and skin all - was gone.

Annabelle apparated again, and shoved her wand into the mouth of a wizard and cast a Blasting Curse that blew his head off in gore and blood that coated her front; a jagged piece of his skull embedded itself into her neck. Annabelle...apparated again; killed another person. Her left side exploded in pain as flesh was ripped from it.

Another apparition was done, and she threw herself at a hitmage and took the woman to the ground. She switched her wand from right hand to left, and punched the woman across the face with a right hand that was missing a thumb and a large chunk of its left side. She punched again, and again - and then she jammed her wand tip against the woman's throat with a clumsy motion and cast a Killing Curse. She apparated again; took her wand back in its proper hand, and put it to the back of a man's head and used a second Killing Curse. Her chest exploded in pain, and she glanced down to find herself missing her entire right breast, several ribs, and a lot of muscles and tendons. Annabelle apparated, kicked a man in the stomach and caught him in the temple with a Killing Curse while he was hunched over - and then _she_ fell over. Her entire metal left leg was gone, laying off on its own at her origin point.

Annabelle hit the ground hard. She rolled and waved her wand at the same time, deflecting a deadly curse. She flicked her wand at two mages, and they dodged out of the way of a Killing Curse. She rolled the other way and blocked several Stunners. She apparated again, reappearing flat on her back behind the legs of an assault witch. She severed those legs with an unexpected, very powerful Cutting Curse.

And then Annabelle's wand fell out of her grasp, from out of a hand that had no fingers left to hold it.

"Give it the hell up, Ms. Potter - you're killing yourself!" a wizard shouted at her, brandishing his wand at her but not casting a spell yet. "You've no wand left to fight with, and none of us _wants to do this,_ _so stop fighting us!_ "

Annabelle smiled with one half of her face. She lifted her silver left hand, and held it out in front of her; a shimmering, silver barrier coalesced in the hallway, separating them.

The wizard cast an experimental Stunner at the barrier, and it was reflected back at him with twice the speed and force of its original casting. He only barely managed to absorb it into a shield spell of his own. "Damnit, Ms. Potter, take this thing down, right now! Take it down, or-"

The wizard's words trailed off into a sharp scream, as he was tackled from behind by several small magi-arachnids. A much larger one continued right on forward, and passed through the barrier to approach Annabelle.

They lowered themselves to the floor beside her, and nudged her with a long limb. *I will carry you someplace to be healed.*

*No,* Annabelle replied, in perfectly recognizable speech (for arachnatongue, being a magical language, did not necessarily _require_ working mouth, throat, vocal cords, or anything else to be articulated). She pulled her leg in and used her stump and metal arm to push herself onto her side. She snatched up her wand again in her metal hand. *Carry me - I'm grateful for that, whatever your name is - but we're going to go right back into the fighting. Take me somewhere, someone...needs protecting. I can still help.*

*My name is Taru.* The magi-arachnid hesitated. *You are dying. You _need_ healing.*

*Then I die!* Annabelle hissed. She started pulling herself up onto the magi-arachnid's gritty abdomen, and pushing off with her remaining leg to get as much of her center mass atop the exoskeleton as possible. *Take me to a place I can help!*

The magi-arachnid lingered, their pincers working in a furious show of worry. A foreleg tapped the floor once, twice... *I am taking you to be healed, Annabelle Potter. My people are helping - trust us to keep doing it. Trust Nyllia. If you cannot trust any individual, then trust our nature.*

*I'm going to...throw myself...off...and crawl if I have to!* Annabelle began to protest, as the Taru took up a careful, slow journey down the hallway - very much _not_ in the direction she had wanted to go.

Taru let out a faint hiss. *You're dying. Be still, and be quiet. I will not - I cannot - let you die. Tribe members ensure the survival of one another. You are my tribesister. So, as your tribebrother, it is as simple as that for me.*

*No. No, I...* Annabelle's efforts at arguing drifted, as she did; her vision in her right eye, her _only eye_ was fading now too. She could hardly feel the sandy, rough exoskeleton beneath her. She felt...cold again?

 _Oh shit, I'm dying again..._

A flash of orange streaked over Annabelle's head, continuing down the corridor to strike the wall; the wall promptly decided to expand outward like a filling balloon, becoming transparent and shifting to an orange color that pulsed and glowed.

*A trap spell!* Taru exclaimed. His pace picked up, and Annabelle almost slid right off. Taru turned and rammed them right through the nearest door into a spacious ward area. He navigated around and between equipment and monitors and beds. All the while, the mages chased, fired spells after them.

Taru reached the far end of the ward, and then he turned around and looked at the mages. He made a long, drawn out hissing noise, and then the floor was turning into sand. Deep, shifting sand. The mages were standing on this sand - and then they were suddenly sucked down into it as if by a vacuum cleaner. Not gradual, not slow. Less than a second. In the silence that ensued, the sand returned to being normal flooring.

*Where did they go?* Annabelle questioned.

*I bridged them to Lakyri's Rest - to you, that would be the "Mariana Trench,"* Taru added helpfully.

*Lakyri's Rest...? Mariana? You sent them to...?*

*I would assume they're dead now. If the pressures did not kill them, then Lakyri will - eventually, anyway.*

*Yeah...* Annabelle replied, halfhearted and dazed (and not just from her dying state). From everything she'd heard and read about Lakyri, and any whom dared wake him...she actually felt a swell of pity for those poor mages.

Suddenly the ground beneath Taru's many legs became shifting sand, and they were slowly sinking down into it.

*What's happening?* Annabelle asked. *Where are you taking us?*

* _I_ am not taking us anywhere,* Taru spoke. *Another of my kind is trying to connect with us from their own _lucar_ bridge. If I accept the connection, I do not know where we will go.*

*Then don't let us go.*

*You're dying,* Taru responded. *I will accept, and we will leave, and you will be saved.*

*No! I don't care, I'm not leaving anyone here!* Annabelle raised her wand to levitate herself off Taru's backside - and then she was being sucked down into hot, shifting sands. In this sand and heat and darkness, she lost all consciousness.

* * *

Annabelle woke up to a familiar sight...as well as so much unfamiliar to her.

The familiar was Norberta's snout in her face, and those beautiful slitted eyes blinking at her. The unfamiliar was _literally everything else_ :The fact that Annabelle was laying out on her backside, naked, in some kind of natural spa of shallow, hot water; the fact that there was grass and trees, and ocean in any direction she cared to look out into the distance. She was on a high mountain ledge. And below her...the expanse of an island of supernatural beauty and lushness. So clean, so clear, lightest of breezes brushing over her...

Oh, and then there were the two amazon women standing at pond's edge. Tall, muscular, gorgeous. One had copper hair in a tight ponytail, the other had disheveled jet black hair matted with sticks and dirt. They were a complete tie for Annabelle's attention; she gave them a _long_ once over, then very firmly returned her attentions to Norberta.

[What day is it?] Annabelle asked of Norberta, sitting up in the shallow water. The breeze became much more noticeable, and she crossed her arms over her chest - one real, one magic metal.

Norberta opened her mouth and gave Annabelle's face a long, slow lick. [September 1st. You've been in and out of consciousness for days - do you remember any of the times you were awake?] Annabelle shook her head. [I didn't think you would. The amazons have had you on medicines, herbs and crude potions, and Adelyn gave you a few modern ones she brought from the mainland.] She twisted her long neck around, dug under her stomach, and reemerged with Annabelle's wand held lightly between her teeth. [The amazons wanted to break it - but they didn't want to fight me for it, either.]

"We wanted to break it, yes," spoke the black-haired amazon, turning a fierce look on Norberta. Annabelle looked between them, and realization struck her: the amazon _had understood Norberta._ "Because we amazons do not live our lives influencing all the world and its people with magic - it is not an outward force for us, to bend and control and contort all around us - but instead we devote ourselves to turning our magic inward, to better and strengthen our own bodies. We are faster, stronger, and more resilient than any normal mage even can be - not to mention we live at peak physicality for centuries compared to any of you. We are warriors of the highest calibre. We fight for the innocent, the weak, and we fight for truth, justice, and freedom. After you and your arachnid arrived here, we assembled quickly, and we moved to join in your battle and continue where you had left it off. And at the end, we brought the innocents here for safeguarding, in wake of the ones that had already arrived with Norberta."

The copper-haired amazon gazed down at Annabelle with a considerably softer look than the one that the black-haired woman had given Norberta. She placed a strong hand on a stronger hip. "We do not turn away those who come here by chance or accident, or those in need of emergency assistance - mostly because it is so rare an event for us - and while you are here we will treat you with hospitality, but we will not allow all of you to overstay your welcome. We will give you all time to fully recuperate, and then you will be given three days to prepare for return to your own lands."

Annabelle stood up in the waters - gave her wand a random wave down at herself, and materialized clothing on her body that came all the way from her New York hotel room suitcase. She looked up and met the copper-haired amazon's gaze. And _that_ was the moment that yet another realization hit Annabelle. The realization that something was very wrong with her eyesight. There was a huge black spot on her left side, and everything around her just looked...smaller? Thinner? Distant? She glanced at Norberta. [My left eye is still...still missing? Nobody could replace that?]

[Not until we get you to a magical hospital,] Norberta responded, in apologetic tones. [The operation will be quick and painless once we get you in for it, though. At least, that's what I was told by Jenny.]

[Jenny?] Annabelle repeated. [Do I know a Jenny? The name's familiar...]

[Kyle's Jenny,] Norberta supplied, and her tone...well, had she been human, she'd have been smiling. [In the final hour, before the nonmagic police and military forces appeared to put a definitive end to the assault, Kyle came back. And he came back with his...his Jenny. Adoptive mother? Unofficial guardian? I'm not sure-]

[Don't worry about it,] Annabelle interrupted, and she smiled. So Kyle had come back to help, in the end...that was great to know.

[Yes,] Norberta nodded. She puffed flames from her nose. [He's here, you know - so is Jenny. They're staying around, looking after people who need the medical treatment still. Oh, I thought you should know that Kyle has expressed several times over just how remorseful he is about having left you like that - and just how _concerned_ he's been about your status these past days we've been here.]

[Really? Has he- has he been up here?] Annabelle asked, feeling her heart skip a beat. _Was he looking at me naked for days on end, to heart's content?_ If he had been...Annabelle would have some _mixed_ feelings on that little matter.

[Oh no,] Norberta replied, with quickness and a certain sincerity. [The amazons wouldn't let him up here at all: it's a sacred place, even among amazon women. No ordinary _woman_ would be permitted to come up here, much less a _man_. It was these waters that saved your life, when even spells and potions were failing to have any effect. You would have died, Annabelle, anywhere else and any other situation. Any other day, you'd be dead right now.]

[Good to know,] Annabelle murmured, more to herself than anything. She looked up at the copper-haired amazon again. Switched back to english. "Uh, so, first off, thank you for the hospitality. Second, I'm Annabelle. Annabelle Potter. And it's really nice to meet you. And thirdly, um, thank you so much for saving my life."

"I am Helen," the amazon replied, tossing her hair. "And, saving your life was not the goal, so much as saving your _soul_ was." A strong, sharp jaw showed off a gorgeous smile. "You've the soul of an amazon, despite being born an outsider. You went so far as to nearly give your own life away for the sake of showing your nonmagic kind the truth of the world around them, and for the sake of preserving their freedoms and their civil rights when faced with those who would take those away from then on pure whim - because such people found themselves powerful enough to just _do so_. You have our highest respects, and for you at least, we would welcome you back here any time you wish."

Helen stepped into the waters, bare feet submerged, and came in close to Annabelle. "Whether you wish to eat, drink, train in our ways and share in our knowledge, find refuge with us in times of need, partake in sexual intimacies as you desire, or perhaps seek out a proper woman to wed with...Themyscira will embrace you."

"I will...keep the offer in mind," Annabelle replied, grinning up at Helen with a bit of an awkwardness burgeoning in her. "One little bit of knowledge I'd love to know right away here is: how is it that you can understand Norberta? Do you know draketongue too? You speak it?"

Helen stepped back, shaking her head. She let loose with a loud laugh. " _That_ magic? A cheap trick, instant understanding! I am centuries old, Annabelle. I do not have any need to rely upon that _translator magic_ to understand the language of dragons - I learned it naturally, over many decades, by spending time with the dragons of old themselves. I could even speak it back to Norberta if I wanted, though I'm sure I am very _rusty_ after so many centuries, and she would not want to hear such disrespectful mangling of her people's languages." She narrowed her eyes down at Annabelle. "You _do_ disrespect her by using that magic. It shows you have no intention of actually learning about her, her people, and bonding with her naturally. You'd not put in the effort if you did not have your _shortcut_ , I think your modern outsiders say?"

[I don't feel disrespected,] Norberta spoke up quickly, a fierceness burning in her tone. She reared up and stared down at Helen with flared nostrils. [Annabelle is like the mother I've never even had - or, she's the mother I had, I suppose! Yes, she's my mother. And you don't know a thing about her, or about me! She loves me, she's raised me, and I love her back! And she could learn my language without the _translation magic_ if she wanted to, but neither of us have a problem with how things are now so _it doesn't matter!]_

Helen, to her credit, stood her ground in the face of a furious dragon. She blinked, and relaxed. Then, she began to speak in a very broken draketongue. [I apology, Norber. I...mean not to assume. The outsider is outsider still, though, so I did assume...Apology from me. Misjudge, no right to misjudge you. Or her.]

[Apology accepted,] Norberta huffed. She settled back down again. She looked at Annabelle, attentive and expectant.

[I accept your apology, too,] Annabelle told Helen, heaving a sigh. She walked up to Norberta and began stroking her head with her right hand. [But this does all bring up a good point. What if I were to ever lose this magic? I'd have no way of really holding a conversation with you again, Norberta. And that...that would be heartbreaking for both of us. I should- I _should_ take a few years to try and get it all down, _au naturel_. Just in case. I should do it with _all_ the languages I have magical access to, in fact. It'd probably be a nice gesture to the nonhumans I always interact with. Like Helen said, it'd show I took the time to...know them, know their language, for real.]

[If you really want to, we could start that soon,] Norberta said in agreement. [Maybe set aside an hour or two for the lessons? I wonder if there's a magic or a potion out there to switch off your understanding to begin with though?]

[We can ask Professor Dumbledore when we get back to Britain. I'm sure he'd love to help - give him a new project to tackle in his spare time,] said Annabelle. She looked out over the island, breathed in the air. She tilted her head back and felt the sun. Her lips formed a smile. "Helen, would you mind showing me down to where everyone else is? I think a lot of people would love to know I'm not dead yet."

* * *

In the lush grass of a large park area, surrounded by trees and cast down upon by sunny rays, tickled by the lightest breeze, Annabelle and friends were gathered.

Food and drinks were abound, tables and chairs were set out - transfigured and conjured, didn't matter. Several transfigured loudspeakers were set about, blasting out music that put a smile on Annabelle's face as she danced freely about (in consideration for the amazons, the area of the party had been cast about with sound-muting charms). Of course, that wasn't the _only thing_ around that had her smiling.

Miranwe was creating a very special web between the branches of a tree. It was an expression, an experiment on her part, of pure _art._ This artistic webbing was multicolored, vibrant, reflective as any jewel - a gift on Annabelle's part (along with the explanation of what "art" was to begin with). Miranwe seemed to have a pattern in mind as an end result, though she seemed to be still at least an hour or two's time away from completing it. She was definitely taking her time with it!

Under Miranwe's tree sat a very wary, very withdrawn Helena Dark, her son held protectively in her lap while she watched everyone else's activities.

Standing in the shade of another tree was Adelyn, her vampiric features entirely on display. Clearly, she was uncomfortable with it, and with herself, but...she was making the effort not to be. Annabelle watched as Adelyn was approached by her twin children - Jack and Erika - who had apparently taken it upon themselves to show up to the hospital battle toward the end of it all after seeing most of it on the news. After seeing Adelyn being cornered and hurt. They had flown over in their animagus forms, ravens both, and they had both snuck and fought their way past many a mage to reach Adelyn. Though horridly reckless and dangerous their actions had been, they had still actually ended up rescuing Adelyn from being taken into international mage custody.

"...come on, _mom_ , come dance with us," Erika spoke - demanded, rather, in that way she had about her. "You took that luck potion of yours, right? We won't have any problems today."

Adelyn was hesitant, eyeing her children in silence. Then, she sighed and pushed off from the tree. "It's not my curse that would give me problems if I were to dance with you - rather, it's the fact that _I can't dance_."

"Neither can I," Jack spoke up, so quiet and anxious that Annabelle nearly missed it. "Please, just try?"

"All right." Adelyn put on a smile, took her son's hand, and led him out of the shade. And they began to dance. Out of sync, out of step...but both were smiling. And even Erika, with crossed arms as she watched her mother, was smiling too.

Annabelle looked next to Anju, who was off on her own, kneeling in the grass with her wings folded over her front. Taru was in the park too, chattering away with several other magi-arachnids whom Annabelle knew had been there at the hospital defending the patients - along with two Themyscira-born magi-arachnids, one of whom had been the one to initiate the _lucar_ bridge with Taru that had brought him and Annabelle here to begin with. Annabelle shifted her gaze again, and glimpsed Kyle and Jenny off on their own, far and away from everyone else. Annabelle hadn't approached them yet, and neither had they - or, _Kyle_ \- approached Annabelle in the least. She was content to let things sit like this, if they wanted to let it sit this way. When things changed...they'd change.

Annabelle started off across the park toward Norberta, who was resting in the grass as casually as anything. [Norberta. How're you doing?]

Norberta let out a puff of fire, flexed her wings, and began bobbing her head along with the music. [I'm happy - you're happy; the SRM _won_. It will be nice not having to hide anymore,] she answered seriously. Then she went on, in humorous tones, [And, going forward, I'm not going to be worried about the nonmagics and their firearms. As if _these_ scales could be cracked by little bits of metal smaller than my smallest teeth!]

Annabelle twirled and swayed closer to Norberta along with a musical riff, reached up her arms; Norberta dipped her long neck and put her snout in Annabelle's hands, nuzzled into her palms. [Well, regardless - and regardless of your heroics - they're already scared of the simple fact of your existence, so let's not do anything that might encourage them to start taking some shots at you when we get back to the mainlands.]

[No charging at them and roaring like it's hunting night, got it,] Norberta responded. She flicked out her long, large tongue and licked Annabelle's forearm. [Maybe once they've all gotten used to my existence, though...it'd be really funny, wouldn't it?]

[Depends who you do it to.] Laughing, Annabelle dropped her arms and backed away. Twirled again. And there was Gertrude hunched before her, lips twisted into a playful grin; she nimbly climbed Annabelle's body and wrapped thin arms around her neck, kissed her on the lips. She wrapped her legs around Annabelle's abdomen, securing herself. Annabelle stumbled, staggered from surprise. She held to and squeezed Gertrude's rear with an absent hand, and flicked her wrist out behind herself to conjure an empty chair to fall back into.

"I never thought I'd see anything like this in my life," Gertrude rasped, drawing back with heavy breath. "Teafa would say we've just opened ourselves up to broader discrimination, hatred from more sides and different angles - but I say fuck that. I say we've opened up a way to stop all that; and to do so much more. With no need to hide from your nonmagic, dominant societies anymore, my people could have more land, more opportunities with more people. Things no one's ever considered before. It'll take time, more SRM actions, but I think we can do it. This is the start of something good, something better for all of us - I can feel it. We just have to keep pushing ahead with it."

"I believe that too," Annabelle replied, lolling her head back to take the sun on her face. "Wouldn't have done it if I didn't. This is better for everyone, the entire world. Segregation and oppression, historically, hasn't done _anyone_ any good. Not a once. And it's still ongoing, in all societies. The only way we're going to stop it, is to all keep going forward together. Keep breaking down barriers and crossing borders."

" _Kintatu, sheezu, mata whal! What in the world is all this_?!"

Annabelle sat upright at the familiar language - and accompanying voice - nearly sending Gertrude right off her lap. She looked for the source, the speaker; and she found them in Confiance.

The fairy came soaring across the park, low the ground, and fluttered her way right toward Annabelle with a vengeance. She got right up in Annabelle's face and twisted around, and fluttered her wings against Annabelle's nose and eyes. Spinning back around to face Annabelle properly, Confiance hovered there with an accusing finger raised. "The biggest, various bunch of beings in one place in centuries and you didn't invite me? Some friend you are, some _thanks this is_ , for the brave, sexy little miss who risked her life for you and your little club! I could've been smacked out of the air, sliced in half, or eaten by one of your magi-arachnid friends for my troubles! What if those government _kestras_ had taken me, forced me to hand over my collection?! I've spent years building it up, you know! And I'll have you know that I don't appreciate-"

"You know, I heard from quite a few people here that they couldn't find you after the whole situation was done with," Annabelle interrupted, a grin coming over her face. "And isn't _that_ an interesting question? Where did you disappear off to? Were you kidnapped, lost, what was it? What was it, I wonder, that had you gone from the fight while we were all still in the middle of it?"

Confiance pursed her lips into a pout, and she turned her chin up at Annabelle. "You're always worrying about me - and I love it - but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I just had something more pressing to take care of, and it really couldn't be helped."

"Thieving coward," Gertrude spat, baring her teeth and swiping at Confiance; the little fairy reacted quick, fluttering up out of Gertrude's reach in an instant. "You steal from Annabelle, you leave her - _and all of_ _us_ \- to die, and you come here now like some-"

"Don't start a fight here, please," Annabelle said firmly, sitting up straighter and putting out a hand between Gertrude and Confiance. "Confiance, why don't you go visit with Hermione? I'm sure she'd love to see you again."

"I've missed her hair," Confiance mused, spying Hermione from afar (Hermione, like Adelyn's twins, had seen the news and answered the call to battle without a second thought). She hesitated a moment longer, then took off across the park; she flipped herself around and flew backwards long enough to send two middle fingers Gertrude's way.

Gertrude's claws dug painfully into Ananbelle's shoulders. "Annabelle, how can you still call her a friend at all?"

"I've known her since I was a kid," Annabelle responded, shrugging. "She was one of the first few nonhuman beings I actually met, and formed a bond with. She used to live in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. Confiance...she grows on you. And no matter how she acts, or what her career choices, her heart's in the right place - she still showed up, didn't she? She fought, she helped. I didn't ask her, I didn't call her like I did you, or Anju, or Oguk, or Nyllia's tribe - _and she still was there for me._ She showed up for me entirely of her own choice. That matters. _To me, that matters_." And it _always_ would matter, to the little girl who'd grown up in a cupboard, with no one who had cared for her, no one who had noticed her, bothered to reach out and try to help her. To the little girl who had had to actually _reach out to others, and help herself in the end._

"I suppose," Gertrude said quietly, eyeing Confiance from afar now with softer eyes. More considerate a gaze. She turned her attention fully back to Annabelle, and kissed her again. "I'll have to give some more time to her if I want to warm up to her too."

"She'd like that," said Annabelle, as she watched Confiance too; watched her flutter, juke and dive around Hermione's head, snatching up bushy locks and twirling and tugging it all every which way. Unlike when they were kids, however, Hermione seemed markedly less irritated about the whole song and dance. Annabelle supposed that Confiance's showing up for them all like she had, had actually touched Hermione's heart too - and softened it a fair bit when it came to the mischievous little fairy.

A sudden, loud crack filled the air, punctuating the music; Lisa Turpin appeared out of thin air, her pale, scarred face tight. She marched up to Annabelle with her wand in hand.

"Lisa, if this is about our wedding issues again-" Annabelle began, getting up from her chair and letting Gertrude down carefully.

"Shut up - I need to talk to you," Lisa cut her off. She extended a hand, an air of urgency about her. Her other hand was shoved deep into her jacket. "Come to my house with me real quick, all right? Please?"

"All right." Annabelle took Lisa's hand, and Lisa immediately disapparated the both of them. They reappeared in Lisa's familiar sitting room. Lisa set off down the hall, dragging Annabelle along. They went to Lisa's bedroom, where Annabelle was promptly shoved down onto the bed, and then was joined by Lisa herself.

They sat together, like this, in total silence. Annabelle kept herself calm, and steady; Lisa, on the other hand, was staring down into her lap and toying with a long lock of blond hair. Her scarred face was twisted with stress, and with anxiety - and maybe with fear? Annabelle held the silence, held the moment until...

Lisa's head came up, and she stole Annabelle's gaze. Her lips were stuck in a heavy frown. "How did you stop being all fucked up?"

Annabelle stared. Took a breath. "Excuse me?"

"You and I - we were never as close as you and Daphne were - but you...your childhood. It was fucked up, you were being hurt, and you were always scared, and quiet, and- and how did you know what to do? Where to go? What to say? Who to say it to? How did you even- even up and _do it_? And how do I do that too?"

"Is somebody in your life abusing you?" Annabelle asked.

Lisa flinched. Her face screwed up even more. Her shoulders shook; she looked down again. "I don't- know? I don't know if it's really _abuse,_ I mean, she's...my new girlfriend - been together a few weeks now. She can get mad pretty easy, and she's got a damn mouth when she is, and she's said some mean things, some- fucked up shit, but she's not...she's not hitting me or anything like that. Well, except one time, and it was an accident, and it was just some- some accidental magic."

"Can you...show me what she did?" Annabelle said softly, nodding to the hand Lisa had still stowed away in her jacket.

Lisa drew in a shaking breath, hitched along the way several times over. She nodded. Drew out her hand, and held it up. The back of her hand was marred by a huge spot of blackened flesh - burnt flesh. Her ring finger was sticking out at an odd angle, and the base of it was ringed with a deep, blood red magical residue.

Annabelle's breath left her. She shut her eye a moment. Only a moment. "Okay. Lisa, does that- have you tried anything to fix it? Gone to a hospital? What do you...what do you want me to do to help you?"

"Whatever you did to help yourself when we were kids," Lisa whispered, shoving her hand back into her pocket. "Just do that for me, okay? I'm not a moron, I know this is wrong, and fucked up, and I know it's- _I know, okay?_ But I don't know what to do to make it _not_ fucked up. She wants to get engaged, and she's always saying how beautiful I am, and how she doesn't give a damn about my scars - and that's stupid because you know I'm proud of them - but the way _she says it_ just makes me feel...all the same, I feel...and I think maybe I can just ignore...maybe she just had a bad time at work, or...but I know what that is, I know what that thinking is, because I saw it all the time in _you!_ " Lisa slammed her fist down on her thigh. A tear came loose and fell down her marred face. "I saw it, I had to listen to you say the stupidest shit, every day, every time it was brought up, and I walked with you to those therapy sessions about as many times as Daphne did, or Hermione, and I... _I know what this is_. I know it's not _right_ , all right? I watched you go through this shit for years, even after you got out of that household. You're still fucked up over it!"

"I know."

"Right? So- help me! I don't want to be like you! You were a fucking _wreck_ when we were kids, you were a little- lying, crying, flinching little- and I don't want to be that too, sorry. So...please, help me here. Whatever you did when we were kids to get through it, to get away from it, do it for me and get me away from mine. Because I don't want to be in this situation, this life. I don't! But I can still- I can still see myself falling into it, getting _dragged into it!_ "

"Of course I'll help you with this."

"Okay," Lisa said, nodding, and staring at Annabelle with _earnest_. "Okay! So what do I- what do I do first? What did _you_ do first, with your relatives?"

"Okay, first, Lisa, we need to go." Annabelle stood, took out her wand and looked around the room. "We'll pack your things, your clothes, trophies, whatever you have and want, and we'll go to my place. Right here, right now. You don't have to leave a note, or anything like that if you don't want to. You don't have to explain why: she knows why. It's a choice, it's all on her, and it's not your fault at all."

"Yeah. Okay. Things- get...things, let's get things, and go, and...things." Lisa took out her own wand, and gave it a flick. A suitcase appeared out of thin air. She gave her wand another little flick, and clothing from the dresser and food from all the way in the kitchen and little slips of paper from the sitting room all came zooming into the bedroom. Funneled through the door, and flew right into the suitcase. Everything piled on, smooshed down into a horrid mess - but it was all there. Lisa lowered her wand, looked to Annabelle expectantly. "Things are here. What the hell is step two?"

"My place," Annabelle reminded, smiling as best she could. "Grimmauld Place. We get there, we do...what you want. You want to sleep, or eat, or hang out and watch TV, or...whatever you want to do. We just get there, and we stay there. Just relax."

"Sounds good," Lisa said, smiling back with watery lips. "I can't- I can't...it doesn't even feel _good_ to be here anymore, you know that? I feel...damn tense, and- like I'm out on a hunt, getting a bounty, tracking a target? You know? Like I'm...fuck, _in danger_? No shit, Lisa, you know that. You know this. _You watched her with this shit_. Just never thought it would be _you_. Why do _you_ have to have this happen to you now too?"

"I understand," Annabelle said kindly. "We get to my place, you won't have to feel that way anymore."

Lisa gave another nod. She pointed her wand with shaking hand, and her suitcase zipped shut and leaped up into the grasp of her mangled hand. She winced, let out a curse, and dropped the suitcase with a loud thud. "Shit," she spat out. She slashed her wand violently at her suitcase, and it levitated in the air before her. She glanced at Annabelle, uncertainty written in her scarred features. "I- could you take it?"

"Sure." Annabelle grasped the suitcase handle and pulled it free of the levitation charm; she felt its full weight as she held it at her side. She stowed away her wand and held her hand out to Lisa. "Okay, Lisa, we apparate away in three seconds. Want to count up or down?"

Lisa shook her head, gave the lightest of chortles. "What the fuck does that matter? What are we, kids again?" She summoned up a harsh look, and continued on in utter seriousness, "Don't do that, don't start treating me like a fucking kid, all right? I'm not falling apart because of this, I'm not some piece of china now! Oh, I got my hand fucked up _once_ , and had some bad names called on me, so _fucking what?!_ "

"Sorry - you're right." Annabelle wiggled her hand at Lisa. "Down from three, okay? I just don't want us to get splinched; after how much I fucked myself over a few days ago, I might've lost a bit of my confidence in my apparition talents."

"Hey, don't," Lisa started, her lips curving with a genuine, warm smile. "I've rewatched the footage of you a few times over now, and you were _badass_ , yeah? You're still badass. For that, for when we were kids, and...now for this. For me. That's...why I wanted to marry you so damn bad, why it hurt so much when you just...left me at the altar." She sighed. "We're both pretty badass, and I thought we'd fit together, have long years ahead of keeping that up together as partners. I was so wrong on that one, though..."

"Sorry-"

"Don't apologize again, I'm getting sick of hearing it," Lisa cut across. "Just- just apparate us, okay? I'm tired." She hesitated, then took Annabelle's hand. Hesitated further still; her eyes shifted, brightened. "So hey, did you modify your room again, or do you still have a bed? If you do, I'm taking it. And, does Sirius still have my favorite snacks? When we were kids, you know, we'd stay up all night and I'd get so...so sick I'd... _get sick_." She laughed, a real laugh. Annabelle laughed, too.

"Apparition commencing," Annabelle tried for some humor. "Three...two...one..."

 _Crack!_

Annabelle and Lisa appeared in Grimmauld Place's sitting room. Immediately, Annabelle checked herself and Lisa over for injuries - for missing _parts_. There were none, thankfully.

"Hah, see? You've still got it," Lisa said, flashing another genuine smile. She brushed her hair behind a scarred, torn ear, and set off across the room to the hallway. She threw a look over a shoulder, hand resting on the entryway. "I'll be in your room, making changes to it. Bring my things in whenever, get those snacks, yeah?"

Annabelle smiled. "Yeah. I'll be there in a minute - I should go tell Sirius I'll be here a few days again. Not to mention everyone back on Themyscira. Which, by the way, how did _you_ know where we all were?"

"Am _I_ going to be here a few days?" Lisa inquired, narrowing her eyes - and completely avoiding the question about Themyscira.

"Do you want to be?" Annabelle returned, perfectly innocent. If Lisa wanted to ignore the Themyscira issue, then Annabelle would let it rest for now.

"Yes," Lisa said, in a quiet voice. "I've always loved it here. It's always smelled nice. And we've had fun, every time."

"Okay, then." Annabelle set Lisa's suitcase in the middle of the room. "Yeah, go ahead and get comfortable, get situated, and I'll see you in a minute or two - with snacks." Lisa lingered a look on Annabelle, something inscrutable, and then she disappeared into the darkness of the hall. Annabelle let out a long breath, and set off for the dining room, as her first stop on the search for Sirius.

* * *

"You really messed up my room."

"I made it better - and it's my room now. Accio," Lisa added, offhand - the packages flew out of Annabelle's hand and landed on the bed in front of Lisa. "Sorry to bring up Daphne, but, have you seen her since the...what're the whole world's media outlets calling it, _the Revelation?_ "

"Once. I checked up on her once - about two hours ago; the amazons have her in an underground chamber, really protected and heavily guarded. She's still..."

"An enormous stupid monster?"

" _Different_ ," Annabelle refuted firmly, sitting down on the bed with Lisa. "Hurt, and confused, and scared, and...lacking her mental faculties, yes. Clearly, when she disappeared a month ago in Egypt, she was taken and used in some kind of dark magical experiment. She was tortured, twisted, and...made into whatever she is now. I don't know if what she is now is the end result, or if they consider her to be a failure - but she is what she is."

"Whatever." Lisa shook her head. "I'm sure she'll get the help she needs."

"I'm sure, too."

Silence. "Are you going to visit her again later? Ask her about Egypt? Or have you already asked her that?"

"I haven't asked yet. It's in the past, it might not have even been her, for so many reasons, and...right now she's confused, and she's hurting, and she's not mentally competent enough to go through an interrogation like that - about...something complicated - if it was even her. So, yeah, I'm not- not going to ask her about that yet."

Lisa laughed - not a nice laugh - and took on tones of pure mocking. "Oh, look at how selfless and compassionate you are - you sure you're not just avoiding it because you're afraid of her answer?"

"No," Annabelle said flatly.

"Coming from the girl who skipped out on how many therapy sessions, and flat out avoided court because she was scared to face her relatives?"

Annabelle drew a sharp breath. Clenched her right hand tight. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not that girl anymore. You and I, Lisa, we're not kids anymore."

Lisa's gaze traveled up and down Annabelle's figure. Her lips parted; she swallowed. "I've- I've noticed, trust me." She laughed, nervous. "Almost married you over it. Definitely had a lot of...lot of fun times together over it. Both, when we were kids, and all the way up till the wedding day. But that was a year ago, and this is now. This is...today, this is reality, not that dream I wanted with us. You're a global terrorist to the magical governments of the world, a revolutionary leader to the nonhumans and nonmagics around the world, and I'm just some bounty hunter. You're beautiful, and strong, and amazing, and I'm...not so much those things."

Annabelle held Lisa's gaze. "You're still beautiful to me. You're strong, and just as amazing - come on, of course you are. You kick ass and take names across the world, same as me, just...for different reasons. And you uhm...uh, you...Lisa, you..."

"Yeah?' Lisa bit her lip. She darted forward, head down, and kissed Annabelle on the lips. "Do you want to have sex? Again? For old time's sake...?"

"If you do," Annabelle said softly.

Lisa's sharp features became even sharper with the addition of scorn. "I asked."

Annabelle nodded. "Yeah, okay - stupid of me." She tilted her head back and moved in closer to Lisa...


	8. The Shifting World All Around You

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

* * *

 _ **September 2, 1998 - Themyscira Island**_

"Adelyn, are you...leaving for that...thing you said you'd leave for? Your _writing wrongs, fixing the past_ thing?"

Adelyn gave a simple nod, a little smile on her lips. She waved an embellished wave of hers. "Yes. With how everything has turned out - my children being as much targets as me for what we accomplished - I thought that it would really be best to be getting on with it, and with said children in tow."

"World tour with the kids, then? That's great. Hopefully you'll...get to bond more from it."

Adelyn's smile widened into a full fledged grin. "That is one of the hopes I take with me into this adventure, yes..."

"Well, good luck with it all."

"Same to you, Annabelle - undoubtedly you'll have a busy life schedule as well these coming weeks."

"Yeah." Annabelle sighed. "Yeah, probably. But it'll be worth it - for everyone."

"Oh, that sort of thinking is why I loved meeting you," said Adelyn, spreading her arms wide.

"I loved meeting you, too," Annabelle said. She moved forward and hugged Adelyn.

"Oh, no, I wasn't asking for a hug there - just being my usual flamboyant self," Adelyn said - though she returned the hug all the same. She held it for a few long seconds, allowing a very hot-faced Annabelle to retain _some_ of her dignity and composure.

"Sorry," Annabelle muttered as they drew apart.

"Don't be - I'd have made sure you knew to be, if you were meant to be," Adelyn replied, her scarlet eyes soft with compassion. "And besides, it was...well, let's just say I can't exactly remember the last time anyone hugged me the way you just did. It would have been my last wife, and that would have been over a decade ago. But then, she never exactly held me the way my husband before her did..."

Wanting to get away from the topic, Annabelle gestured toward Adelyn's waistband and said, "You know, I never asked you: why the pistol?"

"Ah, this...?" Adelyn drew the weapon out, ran her fingers across the barrel. Looked at it with longing, with joy of times past. "Just a reminder of my days as a privateer back in the 1700's."

"Any special story behind it?"

"Well, yes, but I'm not so sure it's a story I'm ready to tell yet," Adelyn said softly. She stowed the pistol away, pulled her coat over it.

Annabelle felt her face heating up. She looked at the nearest tree. Looked to a further tree than that one. "Okay. Sorry. Uh, yeah, good luck with the world tour, visiting old friends and stuff. Hope the kids have fun with it."

"Thank you." Adelyn turned away. She strode back over to her children; she took their hands, muttered something Annabelle couldn't catch, and then they were gone.

 _Oguk is gone, Confiance is gone, Miranwe left with Kyle and Jennifer...and now Adelyn's gone, too._ Annabelle looked to Gertrude and Anju, Inna and Taru, who were all together still. She looked to Norberta, who was stretching her wings and yawning to the sky. _It's probably time for us to get back to the mainland too_.

[Norberta! I'm going to head back to the hotel - see if the others want to come too, get their first proper experience in a human city - would you mind flying back there to meet up with us, or do you want to hang out here? Or go back to Emerich and Sevra?]

Norberta cocked her head at Annabelle. Yawned at her from across the distance. She looked left, looked right. Drooped her head. [I will meet you back in the city. But I'm going to stay to the rooftops: I've been very tired lately.]

[All right.] Annabelle gave her a nod. A smile. Then she started off toward Anju and the others.

* * *

Upon entering the hotel lobby, Annabelle, Gertrude, Anju, Taru and Inna were greeted with screams, panic of a general sort, and a lot of people with guns positioned throughout. Humans. Nonmagic. US Military? Waiting for them?

 _Oh._

"I payed for it," Annabelle said clearly, gesturing generally _up_. "I'm still- paying for it."

"Staying fee on your room isn't the problem here, ma'am," a soldier called out, from where they were half-hidden behind a pillar. "We're going to need you to stay still here - stay _cooperative_ \- and to _not_ start doing all that shit the news shows you're capable of. Because we are not here to hurt you, but if you start hurting _us_ we'll have no choice here. If you do anything that could be construed as a threat or outright harm, we will open fire. You understand, ma'am?"

"Yeah," Annabelle responded. She looked down at Gertrude, tapped her on the top of her head for attention. "Hey, you hear that? I think they just want to talk, so can you not - no matter what happens - do anything that would be a threat or hurtful to these people?"

Gertrude stared back up at Annabelle, a huge grin plastered on her face. "Sure! I love talking to people - that's how I met you."

"Great." Annabelle turned her gaze down on Inna and Taru. *You two, listen to me here, please, as a tribesister and fellow tribedaughter of Nyllia: Treat these people like they're _our own_. That's all.*

*I can do that,* said Taru quickly.

*I will try to do that,* Inna's response came, a bit later - with a bit of hesitance to it. *I do not know what humans expect of their tribe members.*

*All right.* She looked toward the nearest soldier. "Okay, we'll all be good here. Promise."

The soldier who'd spoken before moved forward, out into the open. Their weapon was let go, hung on the shoulder strap. He held up his hands, sort of a no harm gesture. "I'm Lieutenant James Phelps. Sorry if we scared you, ma'am. We have orders to take you - all four of you here now, plus the- the _dragon_ you had during the incident, wherever _she_ is now - into protective custody."

"You pointed those metal flingers at us to protect us?" Gertrude retorted, cocking her head up at him. "Clearly I need more human interaction, then, because that makes no goddamn sense to me."

"That was for _our_ protection, err-"

"Ma'am, Miss - Gertrude - all woman here," Gertrude supplied, pride in her voice. She grinned a little, added on: "I could show you."

"No need, Miss Gertrude," the soldier said quickly. Shook his head. Refocused on Annabelle - of course: the human. "Ms. Potter? Are you willing to accept our protection?"

"Protection from what?" Annabelle asked - though she already had an idea.

"Your...magic governments. They all want your head, and things between them and us are a confusing, hellish mess. But one thing we know, one big thing we learned, is how they - your specific government that claims territories in Britain - treat prisoners, and we'd like to keep you from that. It's sort of a responsibility; we couldn't in any good conscience send you to face torture and inhumane conditions."

"Especially not when you need to keep me around because I'm your knowledge-slash-bargaining token?" Annabelle ventured.

"Maybe, to the higher ups - but not to me down here, ma'am," the soldier replied. "To the people down here with you, you're something like a hero to us all. What you did for those people in that hospital, and how your own governments are trying to make you suffer for it...it's insane - seems to be a lot of that going around lately. So, because we're all appreciative of what you did, we're going to help you. But you have to let us."

"Okay," Annabelle shrugged. "Gertrude? Anju? Inna, Taru? Want to get helped here, or do you want to go home?"

"Help!" said Gertrude, staring around the lobby with wonder and excitement. "These humans can help the _hell_ out of me, if I get to stay here."

*Nyllia would approve of our staying with you longer,* said Taru. *If you're still in danger, I'd like to be there to fight with you.*

*I am curious about human society,* Inna said, thoughtful. She shifted her front legs, turned her many eyes left and right. *Your den layout is intriguing - so much light and bright colors...*

"As long as I can go back to my village and retrieve our eggs," Anju spoke, with a pleading look at Annabelle. "I should have done that days ago, but I was worried about you, and I didn't think they _would_ be in any immediate danger, at least not from the environment - I left them with a warming aura - so I stayed on Themyscira. But I am going to get them now, if there is a chance of government forces going to my village looking for you - for all of us."

"We all would love to accept protection from you guys," Annabelle informed the Lieutenant. "But just give me and Anju ten seconds here to go get our kids and come back, please? There's no one there to even watch them."

"That's another few dozen major laws you'd be breaking on the spot," said Lt. Phelps, frowning at her. He hesitated, looked to Anju. He sighed. "But I suppose you aren't a stranger to that, are you? And if there are safety concerns here about children...just make it _really_ ten seconds, all right, and I won't say a word of it to anyone - and I'll make sure the rest of my team doesn't either."

"Thank you." Annabelle took hold of Anju's wing, and they disapparated.

* * *

 _ **September 8, 1998**_

"Well, we opened Pandora's Box, now we see what falls out."

"Oooh, are we going to go and do that next?" Gertrude rasped with excitement.

"What? Are we going to reopen the literal...? No!"

"Are you sure?" Gertrude leaned into Annabelle, resting her head on a shoulder. She looked up at Annabelle with a smile on her lips. "Look at me, look at Norberta, look at all the magi-arachnids around the world. We're all just... _people_. We dream, we feel, we think and _we love_ , goddammit! Maybe Pandora was a heroine when she let out all those demons from that box the first time around? It has to be _cramped_ in there. And the ones who put them all in there...the ones who recaptured them and shoved them back into it again, well, I wouldn't think you'd agree with eternity in a tiny box, no matter what crimes they might've committed - if only criminals were put in there, which I doubt, since no system of judgement is perfect. Innocent demons might have gone in there with the rest, and that's _just wrong_. Either way - prison for the criminals or prison for innocents against a bunch of tyrant bigots - we should seriously go and check on that box sometime. Because you know nobody else is going to bother to care to even _look_ ," she finished quietly.

"Yeah," Annabelle sighed. "Yeah, okay. I promise we'll look into that soon."

Gertrude sprang up, shaking her head and baring her teeth. "No, _now_! Let your governments sort out their relations with each other, let your world mull it all over, and we'll go for the box while they're all distracted with one another."

Annabelle glanced at the american police officers - heavily armed _and_ armored - standing in the corner of the room (standing there, watching Gertrude with a certain fascination mixed with discomfort). "We'll have to ask our protection detail about it first; I don't think they'll be too happy about the idea."

"Got it in one, ma'am," an officer spoke, giving her a disapproving look. "This is for you guys, while the politicians sort this mess out over our heads. Don't make my job harder by trying to ditch us."

"We could ditch you in the blink of an eye," Gertrude laughed. "In a heartbeat. In a snap of a finger - like this." She raised a hand, snapped her fingers, and apparated across the room, right in front of the officers.

"That's- noted," the officer said, staring down at her incredulously. "But you still shouldn't uh- shouldn't leave the house. Please?"

Gertrude gazed up at the man. Considered him. "Okay," she said seriously. She apparated back over onto the sofa with Annabelle.

"Just like that?" Annabelle asked. "You've changed your mind?"

"He said please," Gertrude explained, smiling. "I can count on one hand the number of humans who have said that to me in my life."

"He did," Annabelle agreed. "A lot of other people won't."

"It won't be anything I'm not used to already."

"Used to? Maybe. That doesn't mean you should just take it."

"I was recorded on your live television system, during one of the most significant events in your nonmagic people's history, tearing out throats and popping eyeballs in their sockets; any human who thinks I'll just _take it_ is dumber than a kessy rock - not that I'm being speciesist here against them!"

"Humans _are_ pretty stupid," said Annabelle. "We don't know when to quit, when to shut up, when to stay back, stay down. That's the problem. That'll _be_ the problem for you. But, while it _is a problem for you_ , I'll be there for you if you need me."

"Actually, I've changed my mind." Gertrude got off the couch again. "I want to go see what there is to see in your cities. Your high towers, your lights that...shine off them. The sun. What's so fantastic about it all that you're all so packed together, always around each other, always going place to place? What do you have in there? What's there to do?" She grinned, raised a claw. "What's there to _eat_?"

Annabelle stood, too; a casual hand stretched out, and her jacket flew across the room into her grasp. "To eat? We have...a lot of different pubs, different restaurants, diners. There's a lot of variety when it comes to eating in any city, any town - some even make themselves known to the world by specializing in some secret recipe or style."

"You can't leave, ma'ams," the officer spoke, stepping forward, while the other stepped in front of the door. "Sorry, but, orders are orders: you're all here to protect you from the...magical, international governments - can't believe I just said that in a serious capacity - and we even allowed you to personally put up those magic forcefields of yours you were so insistent on, _but_ , if we were to let you go that would render all our efforts moot. So, please, ma'ams, I really do have to insist that you stay put. We have food for you all, and surely you can just magic up food for yourselves whenever you want to? You don't have to leave the safehouse."

"We don't _have to_ , no - but I want to," Gertrude responded, hunching over and starting for the door. "Not really for the food, I guess, but for cultural exploration. I've only ever seen a human city from a distance, dammit, and I want to be in one now that I'm allowed to be in one!"

The officer in front of the door resolutely held to her stance, shifted her weight and stared down at Gertrude with a certain firmness. "Okay, hey, wait a few more days for us, and we'll see about that, all right? But for now, for a few more days, you just have to all stay here. I'm sorry."

"Why don't you come with us, then?" Annabelle said reasonably, looking between the officers. "You're our _escorts_ , so why don't you _escort us_ to a restaurant? We'll be as safe with you out and about with us as we will be trapped in here with you. Just keep a sharp eye, watch for danger - whatever - but this is important. Please. For Gertrude, for...this is important. She's never been in a city before. She's never eaten anything we have; she wants to."

Silence. Exchanged looks of contemplation and hesitation. Then- "All right, look, give us all an hour to discuss it, go over things and make a _plan_ for how we would even do this, and then we're going to call up HQ, then the FBI, on and on up the chain until we get it cleared - _if_ we get it cleared. And then _if we do_ , then we'll take you out to eat. But if the answer is no, if we can't do it, then I want you to stay here and not just go teleporting off like you people do. Deal, please? We're just trying to keep you all safe, because we care, and because we are - some of us, maybe most of us are - grateful for what you did in that hospital, and for what you can _keep doing_." The officer squatted down, looked Gertrude in the eye on her level. "Deal, ma'am?"

"One hour - deal," Gertrude rasped, her eyes shimmering. She turned and made her way back to the sofa, climbed up and curled up there.

"Is anyone else going to want to come along?" the officer asked Annabelle, catching her eye. "Downstairs we've got...Ms. Inna and Mr. Taru, and Ms. Anju? And outside we've got Ms.- Ms. Norberta, of course. Impossible to forget her."

"I'll ask," Annabelle said. "Be back in a second." She apparated into the downstairs sitting room; the officers standing sentry around the ground floor reacted, drawing weapons before they registered who she was. They still weren't used to that, even after five days with her. "Anju, Inna, Taru - we might be getting clearance to go out to eat together in the city, are you in or out?"

*In,* said Taru instantly, clittering his mandibles excitedly.

*In,* said Inna, after a moment's thought.

"Out," said Anju, shaking her head. She flexed her wings and shifted her talons. Glanced down at the large eggs in the nest under herself. "They're going to hatch soon - _real soon._ Tonight or tomorrow, I think. And when they do, I'd like us all to be in my village. In Rynegaul. I want them to hatch in their home. Can we do that? Please?"

"Yes." Annabelle squatted down, reached out a hand and stroked Anju's cheek. Kissed her on the lips. "Even if our protective detail says no, we'll just go anyways. This is way too important for you - for us, I guess - to let anyone stop it. If you want our kids to be hatched there, we'll make it happen."

"Thank you." Anju smiled. She brought a wing up and brushed her feathers against the back of Annabelle's hand. "I'll stay here for now. But, Annabelle, I _would_ love to sample human food - could you bring me back something?"

"I'll bring you back some of everything," promised Annabelle.

* * *

"Stay the hell away from my son, you disgusting _witch_!"

"Actually - not that my species matters - I'm a hag," Gertrude said throatily, stepping back. "But I'm also a witch, you're right about that."

The patron stepped in front of her child, glared down at Gertrude with a curled, trembling lip. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a wooden cross. Held it out in front of her. "Keep your- your _magic_ to yourself, you hear? The power of Christ compels you!"

"That's uncalled for," Annabelle sighed, shaking her head. "Also useless," she added.

"You too!" the woman said, holding the wooden cross up at Annabelle now.

"I'm just here for a good meal," Gertrude said, pattering back over to and hunkering down in her booth. "Hope you have a good one, too - sir or ma'am. And your kid."

Annabelle turned to Lt. Phelps and drew her wand. "Permission to make sure we're not bothered?"

"How?"

"Physical, invisible barrier around the booth."

"We don't need to go that far, right off the bat," Lt. Phelps said, shaking his head at her. "Stow it: we'll handle this the old fashioned way." He turned a stern, authoritative gaze on the troublesome patron. "Ahem. Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to go back to your table, back to your child, and leave us be - we don't want to have to arrest anyone here, all right?"

Muttering and swearing, the woman retreated, clutching her wooden cross tightly to her chest.

"Sorry for the bad first impression of human civilization - wasn't very civilized at all," Lt. Phelps said to Gertrude, in tones of concern.

"That wasn't my first," Gertrude responded, smiling at Annabelle. "I know the bad comes with the good - in anything - so don't worry: I don't think any less of...the people I think well of. And this place that's so...beautiful. The smells, the sights...I'd never imagined a place like this - and you've done it all without magic." She turned her attention to the food at last. She took a sip of coke. Nibbled the end of a burrito. Nibbled some more - took a bigger bite, an _actual bite_ \- and then her eyes were wide. She very, _very_ messily stuffed her face with it. "What is this?" she croaked, after a large, painful swallow that watered her eyes. She downed a long drag of coke. " _What is this?_ This is- this is meat? I know meat when I taste it."

"It's meat, yeah; ground beef," Annabelle responded, smiling.

"What's in it?" Gertrude took up the tray and shoved it under Annabelle's nose. "What's in this? I've had meat before, a lot of meat, but this- this- I've never tasted _anything_ like this before!"

"Uh, I don't know? Preservatives? Flavoring? Seasoning?" Annabelle shrugged.

"I have to know what's in this." Tray cradled to her chest, Gertrude slid out of the booth and hurried up to and then _onto_ the countertop. She leaned in toward the startled, wary cashier and offered the tray to the young man. "You - foodmaker - what did you put in this?"

"W-why do you ask? Is it not...to your liking, m-ma'am?" the cashier questioned, stammering and rearing back.

"It's the best meat I've ever tasted!" Gertrude exclaimed, setting the tray on the counter with a hard slam. "What did you put in this? I have to know, I have to have it - I'll use it in _every_ meaty meal for the rest of my life."

"Gertrude!" Annabelle said loudly, clearly across the restaurant. "Counter."

Gertrude froze. Looked back at Annabelle; then she looked down at her feet. She hopped backwards off the counter and waved a hand - the mud, dirt, and twigs all vanished. "Sorry. Ingredients, please," she went on, gazing up at the cashier, whom was now leaning over the countertop to stare down at her properly.

"Can't say, sorry, ma'am - company policy. But-" the cashier hurried on, seeing Gertrude's absolutely _crestfallen_ expression. "-any time you want more, you can just come right back here, okay? As long as you've got...you know, money and manners, we'll always be glad to have you around as a regular customer."

"Money and manners," Gertrude repeated, as if reciting religious texts. "Money and manners, have money and manners...I can do that!" She spun around; an idle finger snapped, and her tray shot off the counter and settled back at her booth. "Annabelle - can I do that? You have more of that _legitimate_ human money, don't you? How do I get more of that, too? I know I can't just conjure it without getting into trouble, so how do I get it properly? Like a human does? Please? Please, please, please? I need more of this, so, so, _so much more_ _!_ "

"First off, get back over here and settle down. Second, I can easily afford to order us a dozen more of those burritos if you really want me to, so you can bring them back to the _house_ with us - but be sure to leave a few for Anju, would you? Third, just like in magical societies, you need to _work_ to get objects of monetary value."

"I didn't work at Teafa's inn," Gertrude spoke, sliding back into the booth and stealing a handful of curly fries off Annabelle's plate. "She was letting me stay there for free - all the time, always. She was nice...before she was an ass and kicked me out. But I can work! I can work human jobs, human way, if I have to."

"Good to know," said Annabelle, sipping from her drink.

Gertrude stole away another half dozen of Annabelle's fries. "Can I work _here_? If I _do_ work here, can I eat anything and everything for my services?"

"No," laughed Annabelle. "Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. If you get a job at this place, you'd still have to pay for things like anybody else."

"Oh." Gertrude slumped down in the booth. "That's fine too, I guess."

Footsteps clacked on the floor, and a new voice spoke suddenly. "Well look who it is: the conquering heroes."

Annabelle startled; Gertrude jerked upright, stared. The officers around the restaurant made motions for their weapons. The one sitting in the booth got up quickly, stepped between Annabelle and Gertrude, and the new arrival.

"Hey - _ex-wife, ex-wife_ \- no weapons needed," Annabelle said quickly, apparating out the booth and reappearing out in front of her security. "Ex-wife - almost wife, ex...almost ex-wife? Ex-almost...whatever! There's no need to do anything that involves shooting anyone."

"Ex...wife? That's not filling anyone with confidence that this will be a nice, quiet reunion," the officer retorted.

"We parted on bad terms, okay, yeah, but we made up after. Things are fine here," Annabelle assured.

Lisa's scarred face scrunched up as she regarded Gertrude. Her lips spread in a smile. "Enjoying a victory meal? A cozy day out?"

"Yeah - it was getting to me, a lot, being stuck in one place again." Annabelle hugged Lisa; the latter returned it with minimal reluctance. "Had to get out - but it was mainly for Gertrude's sake."

"Mind if I sit in on this?"

"I don't," Annabelle replied. "But I'm not sure about our security - or Gertrude."

Gertrude smiled, showing off her pointed teeth. "As long as she doesn't start eating _my_ food, she can stay."

"As long as you don't plan on bringing her back to the safehouse," Lt. Phelps warned Annabelle firmly.

"No plans for that," Annabelle said honestly. Lisa was best handled...sporadically.

"Deal," said Lisa, a small smile coming over her face. She slid into the booth beside Annabelle, touching shoulders, hips, thighs with her for the first time in several long days now.

Annabelle reached out her metal hand and grabbed Gertrude's as she made for her fries - Gertrude's cheeks puckered, her lips pouted, but she sat back and drank some more of her coke in silence.

Lisa plucked a few of Annabelle's fries for herself, while the latter was occupied with Gertrude; Annabelle shook her head, gave a half-hearted glare at both her friends. "I'm sure these people-" She waved an absent hand at their security entourage. "-are all just _great_ at protecting you - capable, intelligent, all the rest, _I'm sure_ \- but did you make sure to cast anti-apparition charms, other protective enchantments and barriers around wherever they're keeping you?"

"Yeah, that was one of the first things I convinced them about letting me do for us," said Annabelle, nodding.

" _Convinced them?_ " Lisa repeated, scornful. "You should've just _done it_."

"Annabelle is one of the most respectful, heartfelt, amazing humans I know - _of course_ she asked first!" said Gertrude, dark eyes staring intently at Lisa.

Lisa looked taken aback. "Wow. You really must have been an _extraordinary_ fuck to get that kind of-"

"She's my friend," Annabelle interrupted firmly, gripping the table with her metal hand; the force of her hold snapped a large piece off of it. A quick flick of her wand and she'd rectified the damages.

Lisa softened. "Okay. I'm sorry. I'm just-" She brushed her hair behind a mangled ear. "-I'm just worried about your safety. Why are you even bothering to let these nonmagics _try_ and protect you when you _know_ you can protect yourself a million times more effectively?"

"Because," Annabelle began, turning to more fully face Lisa. "the nonmagical government of America has decided to provide us with asylum, until certain terms are met, and they deem it safe enough to return me into the custody of magical Britain - namely, the total abolishment of Azkaban and its practices. They're not willing to send me over to be tortured, or kept in conditions they've deemed to be ' _inhumane.'_ " She paused. Drew breath. "But, for right now, it's protective custody, and eventually false ID's and new lives here - depending on how long it takes for the Ministry of Magic to acquiesce. There are some rules, some stipulations to the deal - one being that if I'm seen abroad, no matter where or how briefly, then the entire thing is off. I'll be arrested, held in a prison instead of being able to roam free in the states. Understand, Lisa, that nonmagic laws were never designed to work with even the inkling of the idea of instant, personal teleportation. So I can't be doing that while I'm under their watch, their protection - it's...breaching treaties, and immigration laws, and so much else that they have. If they wanted to, technically, I could just be thrown in a prison right now for dozens of different charges under their laws - as could you, and a lot of mages out there who travel regularly. But I'm not, I won't be."

"Yeah: because you're valuable to them," Lisa laughed. "You're a hero to their world, a martyr, an informant, hallelujah...and you're a bargaining chip with magical communities. You're a negotiating tool."

Annabelle smiled. "I know. I've broken laws in both worlds - but it just so happens that all the laws I've broken so far have been of insane benefit to the nonmagical governments of the world, so they're willing to overlook _their_ laws that I broke in the process of doing what I did. What we did. And for right now, for what most of them are trying to negotiate for, I'm perfectly content with being their chip. And I'll keep being content with it, so long as they allow me to continue to work on and make progress with the SRM. As long as I can _live_ , Lisa, and live the way that I want to...then I'm fine with where I am now. And I'll be fine with how things will be in the future."

"I'm fine with how things are too," said Gertrude. She crawled over the table and grabbed Annabelle's arm in her clawed hand. Turned an almost defiant look on Lisa. "I broke laws on both sides too, but I'm fine with staying over here on this side of the line if I can keep on living. Even better if I get to experience everything they have to offer me."

"This isn't going to be a zero-sum game, Annabelle," Lisa said quietly, ignoring Gertrude entirely. Her gaze was only for Annabelle. "Sure, yeah, the nonmagical societies will take from the mages, concessions and victories, pertaining to themselves and their people, as well as maybe show the magical societies a lot of things that they can improve upon in their own communities, their own world - but it'll go the other way, too. It always has, between us. Concepts, morals, those things are ours that bleed over into _them_ ; views on sexuality, gender identity and roles - those things, they got from us, for the most part. We improved on them, over time and slowly. And now...now they're going to improve on _us_ , in a huge way, in a very sudden way. Okay, yes, they'll do that. But after the oppressed minority has taken, and influenced, after decades or a century or two...the magical communities will want to start taking back. Maybe out of revenge, maybe out of perceived injustices - destroying tradition, stealing power and wealth from people who have it and can't stand to lose it - but it'll happen. This entire...our entire future together, from now on, that's going to be give and take, Annabelle."

"Yeah. Give and take. But as long as one side or the other doesn't try going the genocidal, burning everyone alive route, or the mass population mindrape and manipulation route again - as long as we're equal, in peace, in harmony, in an equilibrium with each other, and no one tries erasing or controlling the other again...as long as we can keep that, we'll be fine."

"And you're forgetting to mention the nonhuman societies out there," Lisa remarked, with a pointed look at Gertrude. "Things are going to get complicated, and tense, if they're all going to be elevated to equal status with any other nation, like you want to help them do, and like most of them want to be. Say some mermaid kingdom in the pacific starts trading with nonmagic Australia. How's that going to look to other mermaid kingdoms, or other nonmagic nations? How would you even _establish_ trade with a society that exists solely underwater? Or what about the goblin nation? If they get access to wands, wandlore, spells, knowledge, and they get equal status? What if they just use all that to launch an attack on a magical government in vengeance, for all that history that's _not_ history to them? Would a nonmagic nation step in, try to help the goblins? Try to help the human mages getting attacked? Or stay out of the whole conflict entirely? What about the dragons? They're getting their intellect back, their powers, their past back. And in the past, you know they were dangerous, and smart. Hoarding gold, attacking villages - it's not just fairy tales and myths. There's a reason...that the ancient Wizarding Council put that curse on their species forevermore. When their numbers grow, when their powers come back to them fully, what're they going to do? They can't hold together any sort of society, any kind of government - they never have! Every single time they've tried making some dragon kingdom, dragon clan, whatever, it falls apart! It never holds for long. Never. And when it breaks, it'll be like before: a bunch of huge, flaming, dangerous individuals doing whatever the hell they want in the world."

"How about fairies, for another example?" Lisa went on, her voice turning evermore snappish. "Nonmagic logging companies versus fairies. They destroy a forest, ruin a lot of fairy homes. A lot of livelihoods. And now? Now those fairies can start suing them for damages, take them to court. How about your magi-arachnids? Some nonmagic stumbles into a den of theirs, gets bitten, eaten up for trespassing or hurting them? Is the offending magi-arachnid going to be imprisoned, taken to court over the whole thing? Nonmagic court? Magi-arachnid societies generally don't do the whole monetary value system thing, they can't be sued or sue back, and the way they see things, being in a human prison would be like declaring war on their tribe. Or what about mermaids? Let's go back to mermaids. How do you imprison a mermaid on land who - let's just spitball here - sexually assaulted some surfer guy? How do you get a mermaid to show up in court when they die if they even get out of the water for more than a minute? How do you extradite them? What happens if the mermaid kingdom just refuses to even let the nonmagics have their criminal? Do they go down there in submarines, blow them to hell? Scuba divers? What? How is this - how is any of this going to work, for any of us, Annabelle?"

"Those are all extremely good points to bring up here." Annabelle took a drink. Glanced out the window. "But those are things that we're all just going to have to try to figure out together as we all go along, I guess."

"What about these guys?" Lisa gestured at their security officers. "How does the average patrol officer do their job when they can come across a criminal who could just wave their wand - or hand, if they're foreign or talented - and make that patrol forget all about it and walk away? The Statute's gone, which means there are going to be a lot of people who will start trying to take advantage of being able to do magic freely, out in the open, now. How will prisons even hold them, do you think?"

"They'll adjust," said Annabelle, shrugging. "Start working with mages who live in and identify with the nonmagic societies in order to enchant items and clothing to prevent magical influence or assaults on officers, or to make prison facilities capable of containing them - anti-apparition charms, the works. The standard things that magical prisons already have around them. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing such enchanted items mass produced, and protective enchantments put up around nonmagic homes for a nice fee. No different than everyone having smoke detectors and burglar alarms."

"All right." Lisa nodded. Idly tapped her palms on the table. "How about...same-sex and even interspecies relationships? Sex, marriages? Partnerships? Those have been happening for a long time for us mages, rare as they are in most parts of the world, but for nonmagics it's entirely new - probably even taboo. Gross. Whatever. Hangups. Nonmagics are way far behind us on that front, however far ahead of us they are on others."

"They'll get better, progress. Just like we did. Just like they are now, slowly. They're gaining awareness, traction - their own movements, advocacy, it's happening. Pushed ahead by them. And now that they're going to be all interacting with a world where that's all already been a thing for centuries, a normal old thing, I think they'll all get a huge helping hand in that regard. The people will see us, see how we live, and they'll cry out for that more than ever, harder than ever. And their governments...will give it to them, hopefully. With some pushing from _ours_. Give and take, like you said."

"Fine, let's go back all the way to magi-arachnids. They have territories, tribes, dens everywhere, all spread throughout the continents - inside established national human superpowers. Are they going to be considered sovereign nations, their own states, or what? How will that work? Will they be relocated forcibly? Confined to only certain areas, regulated over and monitored?"

"I don't know, but I think they might-" Annabelle started.

"Can the heavy talk stop?" said Gertrude. "We're meant to be enjoying this day out, not worrying over the fate of the world."

"Sorry," said Lisa - and she really _tried_ to sound sincere about it. "I didn't come here to ruin your day - much as I'd love to honestly say I _did_ \- I'm sorry," she reiterated, with a look of heartfelt at Annabelle.

"It's fine," Annabelle replied. She smiled. Offered Lisa a couple of fries. "Just- one last serious question for you I...really have to ask. Do you have some kind of tracking charm on me? Because, sorry to get crude here, _how the hell do you keep finding me?!_ First it was Themyscira, now it's here? Some random diner I randomly decided to go to in Manhattan. Explain that to me."

Lisa ripped the drink from Annabelle's hand and took a long, long drag from it. She set it down. Smacked her lips. She smiled. "No clue what the hell you're talking about. I was just in the neighborhood."

"Bullshit," Annabelle snapped. "Try again. Try telling the truth this time."

Lisa's lips parted. She paused. Settled back in her seat. "I don't feel like it. Not in present company, anyway..."

"Fine." Annabelle sighed. Put her head in her hands. "Whatever. I don't even care. As long as you don't use it to hurt me after you keep finding me."

"I've had it on you since we were kids."

Annabelle lifted her head. Stared at Lisa. "What?"

"You were a fucked up little shit, all right? All those therapy sessions, the counselling meetings? The courts? The cutting? You were fucked up, and I was your friend, and I crushed on you and then I loved you, and I didn't want you to go somewhere in the school alone some day and hang yourself! So yes, I put a tracking charm on you! And you never even bothered all these years to even _check_ for things like that, like my stupidest targets I go after in my bounty hunting work, so I just never told you. You didn't bring it up, so I wasn't going to. Besides, it's still been useful to me, hasn't it? Keeping your sexy ass out of trouble, or...or being able to find you anywhere in the world when I need help in my life. When I need _you_."

"Dammit Lisa...on one level, that's so damn sweet and it makes me want to cry, and hug and kiss the shit out of you - but on another level...that's some fucked up stalker bullshit that crosses a hell of a lot of lines!"

"Okay, I'll take it off then."

"No, _I'll_ take it off."

"You wouldn't trust me to?"

"No! You're the one who fucking put it there to begin with and didn't tell me about it!"

Silence.

"I'm sorry," Lisa said, her voice tight and high.

"I know."

* * *

After they had finished their meals, Annabelle bought a great deal of extras to take back to the safehouse - and to give Inna and Taru.

She walked out the restaurant and crossed the parking lot, stepping onto the grass strip that marked border between parking lot and the parallel street. She gave Taru a firm pat, gave Inna a stroke of a leg, and then sat down in the grass with a relaxed sigh. She spent a moment or two just like this - just looking up at the clouds, taking in the sun on her face. She pushed herself up on an elbow and dug through the bags; she retrieved two burritos (cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, whipped cream and of course, beef). She held one out to Inna, one to Taru.

"This is human food for you," Annabelle explained. "Though, I've noticed you two have been a lot more interested in the scenery than the prospect of trying out our meals."

*This is beautiful territory,* Taru spoke. He lifted a limb, waved awkwardly at their surroundings. *And it's all open! All your dens are together too, right out here. Few magi-arachnid tribes would be so bold as to make their living above ground - _on the ground_. At least weave your webs up in the trees! But you don't do that, you humans, and you're without fear? Without any worry for predators, or invaders, or even competition?*

*Well, not exactly. The whole continent is considered their territory. And this territory has been a place of invaders and competitors in human history - several times over, in fact. But these days, yeah, I guess the Americans consider themselves secure enough in their power and status that they don't have to really worry about that happening anymore.*

*There are many magi-arachnid tribes and dens across this territory,* said Inna.

Annabelle traced a toothpick over her inner lip. Ran it over her gums. Teeth. So stimulating, so relieving - she hadn't done anything like it since she was a kid, but it was needed right now. With all that had happened, and would happen. *Yeah. some of them might not be too happy about a major increase in human contact.*

*That wouldn't please too many here,* Taru agreed.

Annabelle sighed. Pulled the toothpick out of her mouth. *No, no it wouldn't.* She looked at Inna. *So, have you...have you seen anything you want to ask questions about-*

Inna shivered - a heartbeat - a crackle of white lightning raced across her body, and then she disintegrated.

Annabelle rolled sideways and drew her wand, avoiding a streak of crackling, black magical energy. She came up on her feet and immediately spotted her target - but she didn't want to believe it at first glance. Taru bent his legs and _sprang_ up into the air - easily a dozen feet - and avoided another magical jet of energy, aimed at _him_ this time.

Annabelle faced their attacker fully, clearly, and she realized that, no, _no_ , _thank god_ , it wasn't who she thought it was. Sure, the features were all there - pale skin, claws for fingers, ghoulishly tall and totally out of proportion, pure black eyes, strange scarlet symbols and black veins over her exposed body - but this woman very clearly _was not_ Daphne Greengrass. She even had some additional aspects to her that Daphne hadn't: pointed ears, a sharper intellect written on her face, and she was clad in a simple white vest and pants.

This wasn't Daphne. And for that, Annabelle's heart could keep beating.

Still, there were some other problems present in this encounter. Annabelle hadn't ever actually managed to beat Daphne into submission: she had ended up convincing her to come with her. Annabelle doubted she'd be able to get through to this stranger, however much she wanted to at least _try to do so_. So, regardless, if Annabelle couldn't convince this person to stop attacking, she'd have to fight them. But she didn't want to hurt them, much less kill them. They were likely to be as innocent as Daphne - kidnapped out of the blue, taken for experimentation and torture and who knew what the hell else. They weren't a monster, they were a victim.

But they were dangerous. They'd killed. Killed _Inna_...

Annabelle thrust her wand at the twisted woman, sending off a nonverbal Stunning Spell. A loud, drawn out hissing noise behind her caught her attention; turning, she saw Taru squaring off against _another twisted person_. A man, with the same ears and that higher intellect on his face as the woman who had killed Inna. He was clad in the same, simple vest and pants as the woman.

Two of them now?

Wasn't good for them - or anyone around them. Doing this in the middle of the city...

Annabelle ran at the woman, raised her wand and cast a spell. Not an attack, a conjuration; a blindfold appeared around the woman's eyes. Those two seconds of blind panic, followed by another second wasted reaching up to tear it off were enough for Annabelle. She rammed her shoulder into the woman and took her to the ground. Annabelle grabbed her arm and apparated. They reappeared on the high roof of a skyscraper. Annabelle slashed her wand left and right, tugged and pushed, twirled and circled, creating binding magical ropes, physical walls and chains all around and attached to the woman. She slammed an elbow down into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Then she cast a point-blank Stunning Spell.

The woman beneath her went still, slack, and quiet.

Annabelle grabbed her hand and disapparated with her. They reappeared in the underground chambers of a Themyscira building. Several guards all startled at her appearance.

"Sorry to dump someone else on you, but hold her for me would you? Thank you." Annabelle apparated back to the diner.

Gertrude was throwing herself through the air at the man from behind, while Taru leapt from the side. James and the security detail were scattered in front of the diner entrance, as much to protect the people inside as to try and get a clear shot at the man.

Annabelle threw up a barrier in the middle of the parking lot, blocking off the soldiers from ever shooting at the man.

Gertrude slashed and hacked away at the man's arm, getting several inches deep into it - clearly she was intent on hacking the limb off wholesale. On the other hand, Taru seemed to be going for a bear hug (errr, spider hug), wrapping all his limbs around the man and squeezing tight as he could.

Annabelle stood by, watching the three struggle; like the soldiers, she didn't have a clear shot. And then suddenly she _did_ , when the man slammed a magic-infused fist into Gertrude, sending her rolling across the parking lot to slam into a parked vehicle hard enough to shatter the windows. Taru let out a loud, brief hiss, and then the man was thrashing and turning, struggling to dislodge him with an insane determination!

Ten seconds passed by, and then the man was tiring. Slowing. He was sweating. He fell to his hand and knees. He drew a long, gasping breath, and then he fell flat on his face.

He didn't get up again.

Annabelle glanced behind her, dispelled the barrier with a thought, and stalked over to Taru. *What did you do to him?*

*I bit him - injected him with my venom,* Taru explained.

*Is he dead?*

*Yes.*

Annabelle closed her eyes, and she breathed.

"They have traces of elven physiology."

Annabelle's eyes opened. She looked at Lisa, who was seeming very interested in the body at their feet. "Elven?"

Lisa nodded. Pursed her lips. She knelt down beside the corpse. Reached out and ran a hand over the man's face. "Living weapons with elven features. Know what that says to me? That says to me that someone or some group out there is trying really hard to turn the first and the best of magic on Earth into the worst monsters we could ever know."

"How's that work?" Annabelle asked, shaking her head. "I don't know anything about elves - except house-elves and forest elves, I think."

"They're how we started. Or rather, _why we were even able to start at all_ ," Lisa began, in patient tones. "Millions of years ago, before...the dinosaurs, before mammals, before modern plants, even, there were the elves. They were there, among the first life to rise on Earth. But...they stood above all else at the time. Because of magic, they just WERE how they were. Evolution didn't factor, or was accelerated, or bypassed. The elves had societies, kingdoms, nations. They fought, warred, made peace, lived, lost. All long before even the first four-legged lizard appeared on land. And when those lizards did appear...evolve, grow, the elves took them as pets. Mounts. And they continued on, until the scientific event known as the Permean Extinction. That was the result of a war, a final weapon to end everything. A massive wave, a blast of power beyond anything the world has ever known. Unleashed by one elven nation, in an ancient ritual they'd created. After that...extinction came for Earth, and all life on it. The continent began to shift and change. But another elven nation, or maybe just malcontents in the ones that had done the ritual, committed themselves to ensuring life wouldn't die out. They protected the plants, the animals - as much of it as they could. And they...infused it all with...their essence, with magic itself. And then the elves died. They died, but...life lived on. And it evolved, it grew, it became what we are now. And magic survived right alongside it. Became humans, orcs, giants, mermaids, unicorns and magi-arachnids, dragons and fairies, and house elves. That's why house elves can do things we can't even imagine, why they can bypass any magical barriers we can throw up. Because they're so much closer to being direct descendants of the original elves than we are."

"And now...someone's trying to take what the elves were and put that into who we are now? Make living weapons out of their remnants?"

Lisa nodded. "Looks like it. If they succeed, more than partially like they are so far, those weapons will be damn near unstoppable. Unbeatable. And terrifyingly powerful - maybe even powerful enough to destroy the surface of this planet again, wipe out all life on it all over again."

"That sounds horrible," Gertrude rasped. She sucked the blood off her fingers. Stuffed a stringy tendon into her mouth. "Can we get back to eating?"

"Gertrude, is that-" Annabelle stopped. Looked between Gertrude, and the corpse. She closely scrutinized the shredded right arm. "Did you seriously take...?"

"I only took _a little bit_ of his arm," Gertrude retorted, crossing her arms and staring up at Annabelle. "I was still hungry, I'm sorry I have basic needs!"

Annabelle dropped to her knees and seized Gertrude's shoulders. Looked her in the eyes - even past her own discomfort, that screaming in her head that said _look away!_ "Okay, very important lesson here: if you're going to be dealing with humans, _do not_ do that anywhere near any one of us. _I_ don't really care what you do with the corpse - he's already dead and his soul's moved into the afterlife, he's fine - but a lot of other humans will. And they have laws about that sort of thing, understand? Laws you need to obey if you're going to be spending any amount of time here among us."

"I understand." Gertrude made a pouty face. "Doesn't mean I like it."

Annabelle shook her head. "I can relate."

"Where did the other one go?" Gertrude asked.

"There was another one?" Lisa said sharply.

"Yeah, her - I Stunned her and dropped her off with the amazons."

Lisa disapparated nearly the moment those words had left Annabelle's mouth.

Annabelle had an idea of where she was going. She didn't bother following her, however. She had somewhere else to be.

* * *

 _ **Norberta's cave home**_

[Would you two be willing to bring Sevra along to Rynegaul for the hatching? I mean I am sort of like your mother, and so that sort of makes Sevra, and these kids of Anju and I's, siblings.]

[I would,] Norberta answered. She threw a sharp look at Emerich. [Would you? I know they aren't my family by bloodline, but I consider them to be family in the core of my soul. Can you find it in your soul to think of them this way too?]

[I...can try,] Emerich said finally, slowly, though sounding as if he found the very idea absolutely _absurd_. [If I'm not going to be able to avoid having relations with humans from now on, then I suppose I can at least make sure those relations aren't hostile - given their numbers, variable magicks and physical weaponry, they would win almost any conflict. No, I don't think there's any reason to be hostile right now - not with this human, especially. Your human...mother. She's doing much to help our people when no one else is.]

[Great,] Annabelle said cheerfully. She reached out and patted Emerich's foreleg. [Let's get going, then.] She pointed her wand at the nearest boulder, and turned it into a Portkey. [Claws on, you two. See you there.] She disapparated to Rynegaul; not a moment later did the two dragons and a giant boulder appear in a flash of blue.

"I'm so relieved that you didn't do that in the middle of the village itself," Anju's light tones drifted on the air - as she herself came drifting through the air toward them, wings flapping without much effort.

[Why?] The inquiry came from Emerich. Total bafflement was running through his voice.

Norberta's tail twisted up around her body and slapped him on the back of a hind leg. [In older times, we dragons were responsible for a lot of trouble - burning down villages, pillaging rich kings and queens, demanding sacrifices to appease us - people don't like it when you destroy their civilizations. And we don't want to make people not like us again, do we? That's a one-way ticket to being cursed stupid again for _another_ thousand years.]

[Understood - but, when I was without my intelligence and my...sapience, you said? When I was that way, I killed and destroyed many people and things in the world.]

[Yes,] Norberta agreed. [So did I - I still remember those days. But I think that, morally, we're not culpable for our actions during those times. Right, Annabelle?] she added, bending her neck and blinking at her with uncertainty.

Annabelle nodded. [That's right. You're not responsible for whatever you did under that curse - just for what you do now, without it strangling your brain anymore.]

[Hmmm,] said Emerich. His tail flicked about wantonly - a spike embedded itself in the grass. He wrenched it free, twisted his long neck around to look at the damages. He looked back to Annabelle. Looked to Norberta - then settled his slitted, orange gaze on Anju. [This area of land belongs to you. I'm sorry I punctured it?]

"He says sorry for ruining your grass," Annabelle translated for Anju.

Anju flapped her wings and hovered a few feet off the ground. On eye level with Emerich now. "That's very considerate of you - thank you - but I'm not worried about the grass and the dirt. Just the buildings; so try not to damage those."

[Your children are going to hatch here soon?] Emerich questioned, tilting his head to one side. He swung his tail and pointed at the large egg Annabelle was cradling in her arms. [That's _ours_. Sevra, we decided to name her - it's an old dragon name that my _wife_ chose from ancient tales of our people. Sevra, the original Sevra, was famous for eating the human children of a long line of kings and queens who weren't the firstborn. She did this for generations, and the reason is that the king or queen of the time had a longstanding agreement with her that she would refrain from attacking their main city as long as she received the sacrifices. Sevra was a clever woman.]

Annabelle's face twisted. Her eyes went right to Norberta. [That's...that's the history of the name? That's...uh, that's _colorful_. Really _interesting_.]

[Isn't it?!] Norberta responded, delighted. [I couldn't believe it when I first read about it. It's perfect.]

[Right...] Annabelle relayed the name, and the history of the name to the others.

[That building is broken.] Emerich lifted a foreclaw and made a vague gesture toward an outskirt cabin; there was a large, felled tree laying over a partially destroyed roof.

Norberta eyed the broken house. She looked from Emerich to Annabelle. [Ask Anju for us if we could fix that for her, please.]

[On it.] Annabelle caught Anju's eye. "Norberta and Emerich want me to ask you if they can fix that whole tree-in-building situation you have going on here still." She gestured vaguely.

"Keeping a village strong is a communal duty," Anju spoke quietly. She stared at Norberta and Emerich a long moment. "I don't have a community anymore. Or do I? Could I be right to think we're all a different, much smaller sort of community at this point? If they want to help, I'll allow them to."

[YES!] Norberta's shout of glee reached the skies. Everyone stared at her - though, everyone save Annabelle and Emerich were doing so because, from their perspective, all _they_ heard was the mother of all dragon roars.

[What are you excited about?] Emerich questioned, his slitted eyes showing confusion.

[This is what we need!] Norberta explained, spreading her wings and giving them some hard, excitable flaps. She reared up on her hind legs, came back down with a crash that rocked the ground. [If we're going to have any chance at making ourselves into any sort of good, functioning society, then we need a taste of _community_! That's what it's all about - understand? We're lazy, and we're selfish, but we're going to change all that. We need to be with each other, we need to talk with each other, and we need to always be helping each other. A community is all about trust, and working together to keep things going as they are. We're going to do that, you and me, here. And then, when enough of our people are awake again, we'll teach them. We'll gather them all, and we'll make a society for all dragons. It won't be like it was a thousand years ago, when all we were was this random collection of individuals spread out across the world, causing death and chaos and stealing whenever we felt like it! We almost went extinct a few times over, and in the end the Wizarding Council came together and put that primal curse on us. But they won't have to do that this time! No one will. We're going to be different, and we're going to be better. We have to, if we're going to live and thrive at all in these times.]

[How do we fix this, then?] asked Emerich, starting over toward the ruined home with utmost caution - an awareness of his own great limbs, his wings, and where they were in relation to the world around him. Annabelle smiled to herself; Norberta could have picked a _far_ worse partner.

[I don't know,] Norberta admitted. She hurried up beside Emerich, reached out a tentative foreclaw toward the building. Twisted her neck this way and that, examining it from all angles. [How about we just try to do the opposite of damaging it all even further, if we can't actually _repair it_?]

[All right.] Emerich growled, low and thrumming - contemplation. He extended a foreclaw, scooped it under the tree, and wrapped his tail around the portion of it that was sticking out of the side of the building. He pulled and lifted, took several steps back, and then he gave an almighty swing of his powerful tail and sent the tree rolling dozens of feet into an open field. [That was acceptable for you?]

[For me? Yes. For Anju? Well, she didn't yell at you...so, also yes, I think.]

[What can we do now?] said Emerich, peering down into the house through the roof. [It's small and delicate, if a tree can do this to it - our claws are too big to do anything with these small...these small _things_.]

[I think that's where they come in.] Norberta twisted her neck and gestured at Annabelle and the rest. [They're small and delicate, too. They can fix the small things, since we fixed the big things. You just have to ask them for help.]

[Will you help us fix the rest of this house?] Emerich spoke to Annabelle.

[Yes,] Annabelle answered, drawing her wand and moving swiftly toward the dragon pair.

* * *

In the middle of the largest village cabin, Anju and Annabelle stood close together, bathed in crackling firelight and warmth.

"This is...this is ours. This is- _us_." Annabelle held her first child to her chest, gazed down at him. _Her son_. "He's got...my eyes. Your...nose?" She laughed, shaky - she sniffled. She choked. "But the um- colors on the...little feathers aren't...same as yours?"

"That's right," Anju responded, brushing a gentle wing edge overtop their child's head. "That's yours, that's all you - the red was...taken from your human hair and...transferred over into the feathers."

"When- when will the others be...be here too?" Annabelle croaked.

"Over the course of the next twelve hours, one at a time," said Anju, soft and joyous. Her lips held the warmest of smiles.

"I want to see...all of them. I want to _hold all of them_. Anju, oh my god...I...this is happening. This is a thing in my life. I'm...I have a _kid_. I'm going to have a hell of a lot more here soon. God, I wish my parents could be here for this. At the least, I...I hope they can see it, from wherever they are, however the afterlife works. I hope they're looking at me, right here, right now, right at this moment."

"The same hope, I have for mine," Anju replied, in the softest of whispers.

* * *

Back at the safehouse _very_ much later that night, Annabelle got the shock of her life.

She was sitting out back, staring across the field and into the forest, when something incredible happened. And unfortunate.

There was a high rustling, a wind in the forest, and then a sand tornado was swirling about in place.

After several seconds, it died away, the rustling stopped. There, towering over the trees, was Nyllia. Over fifty feet tall, her many large eyes glistening in the dark. She shifted her many, massive legs, crushing and knocking trees over like bowling pins.

* _Nyllia!_ * Annabelle apparated across the field, to forest's edge, closer to where Nyllia was standing. * _Nyllia, I'm sorry to be crude, but what the fuck are you doing here - and why at this time of night?!_ *

Nyllia's many-eyed gaze lowered, lowered, scanned the field...and finally fixed upon Annabelle. *Hello, Annabelle Potter. It is a _pleasure_ to see you again.*

*Same!* Annabelle yelled. She paused, pointed her wand at her throat and amplified her voice. *I agree, all right, but _what are you doing here?_ *

*I live here now.*

*You- what?*

*You inspired me, Annabelle, with what you did for your people here. You fought your strongest, your most numerous, all for the sake of making a better change for the lesser. The children. You did that, and against everything and everyone, you succeeded. I came here to do the same. I killed Trucik, I wiped out most of her tribe, and I took over her den. Most of the other tribes on this continent are now answering to me. The ones who aren't, I'm devouring.*

*Okay.* Annabelle took a breath. Took two more. *All right. Nyllia, I respect you, I adore you, but this...I didn't ever mean to... _inspire_ anyone that way! I just wanted to get in, do what I wanted to do, and that was going to be the end of it! I didn't- mean to- to make whole other societies go on a sweeping adventure into genocide and hostile takeovers, and-*

*Perhaps. All the same, that is what you did. I was not the only one to be inspired by you. There are other nations, tribes, kingdoms and places, and many, many people who all feel as if they can finally speak and move for themselves, and for the betterment of the masses. I think that some of them will follow through, like I did.*

*Oh my god. Shit, okay. Nyllia...when you...what are you goals here?* Annabelle fought to keep her voice under control. *Why do this, why get rid of Trucik, take over her place as Queen of...American magi-arachnid tribes? Why do that?*

*I told you: for the betterment of all. I'm going to command these tribes to change. There will be new rules for them to follow - and any who refuse will be punished.*

*What...rules?*

*Rule number one: No magi-arachnid tribe on this continent will harm a human, except in cases of the human harming them first. Rule two: Every single magi-arachnid Princess will establish peaceful and meaningful dialogue and relations with human government officials in the coming weeks. rule three: Every magi-arachnid will treat a human as if they belong to their very own tribe. Rule four: If any magi-arachnid is known to have attacked a human without the human having made an assault on them first, they will be confined for twenty-five days underground. Rule five: If rule four is broken a second time, they will spend fifty days underground. Rule six: If rule four is broken a third time, they will have their limbs removed. Rule seven: If rule four is broken a fourth time, this will be final and will result in their being devoured for being a threat to human/magi-arachnid relations, as well as humans as individuals. Rule eight: With each breach of rules four through seven, magi-arachnid Princesses will be sent to converse with human governments and offer reparations, and this will be followed through on no matter what the humans request. We will cooperate.*

*Nyllia...that is...that is amazing. It's great, it's- beautiful, even. Okay? That you want to- change your people here, make sure things go great between yours and mine as a whole. That's admirable, that's wonderful, it really is! But you're...are you dictatorshipping a democracy here? Do you think that's going to work? That people will just roll over and go, _okay, these are the new rules, this is our new Queen, whatever, I'll listen to her?_ Don't you think you're going to get a hell of a lot of backlash and rebellion going on instead?*

*Perhaps,* Nyllia reiterated. *But rebellion will be dealt with. Rules nine through twelve pertain to those matters. I took them directly from your various human societies. If an individual is a constant and clear danger to others, then they must be removed from society. Is that not how the majority of your governments feel about incarceration and punishment?*

*Yeah, we do, but...* Annabelle sighed. *Okay. Fine. Good job, Nyllia. You're great. This is great. Go for it. See what happens. I'll support you in it, I'll talk to your Princess ambassadors, whatever you need to keep peace and all going - especially between our peoples. But that's as far as it goes for me.*

*I value your word,* Nyllia's voice rumbled, soft and low. *I would appreciate your personal approval.*

*Well I...approve.* Annabelle smiled, ran a hand through her hair. *You've got it, Nyllia.*

*Thank you. I only wanted to promote future prosperity and peace between our peoples, now that we're all coming out into the open together.*

*I understand. I'm sorry. Just...took me by surprise.*

*That was the plan - Trucik never saw it coming.*

*Uh-huh. Well you-* Annabelle stopped. Put a hand to her chest. And she broke into high peals of laughter. She reached up a hand, gestured to stars shining above. *-Nyllia, you've got yourself a few helicopters coming around, and you have a whole- little mini army down here outside the house.*

*Is this your home?*

*Temporarily. Yeah, Nyllia, sorry to say, you broke a few...rules we've got going on here with this. And a few trees. Pretty sure that's a fine, or...*

*I'm sorry. I will summon a Princess to negotiate.*

*No, no, it'll be fine if just...you negotiate, personally. That's how humans do things, leader to leader. Face to face. We like...being on the same level as the other person. Understand? So if you can stick around, you can do that too. It's important for...relations. For establishing and building them up.*

*I understand. I will remain here, then. Which human will I speak with?*

*I'll figure that out for you. Just...stay there. Okay? Don't break down any more trees.* Annabelle, still chortling to herself, turned and fast-walked her way across the field toward the house again. Toward the line of military personnel and SWAT officers.

"Ma'am, what _exactly_ is the situation here?" Lt. Phelps asked sharply. "We'd all really _love_ to avoid a diplomatic incident here."

*Situation? Not sure what-* Annabelle coughed. Shook her head. Flexed her tongue. "Okay, sorry. Yeah, so, that's Nyllia, and she's recently become the one to lead all the magi-arachnid tribes here in North America. She's a friend of mine. She's really intent on opening up a dialogue and establishing a peaceful relationship with nonmagical human governments on this continent now that we're all out in the open together about our existences - she came to ask me for advice, and to tell me what her plan was."

"All- right. So she wants spider peace, huh? This...Nyllia? That's...good."

"Queen Nyllia - and, yeah. Real good. So don't fuck it up, please. She's nothing but earnest here. She's just...trying a bit too hard, in my opinion. But her heart's in the right place."

" _Queen_ Nyllia, yes, got it. We'll keep that in mind. Unfortunately, you seem to be the only one around who can communicate with their...these _people_ , so we'd kind of like it if you could stick around - and also agree to be our translator."

"I can do that."

"Good, ma'am. Thank you. Now, first things first, please tell the Queen over there that we're going to call up and get the POTUS down here for an impromptu meeting with her. The flight should take an hour or so, if he agrees at all."

"Can do." Annabelle apparated back closer to Nyllia. Then she apparated right up onto her backside. She carefully crawled her way down to her head, and then she sat back and relaxed, casually as anything. *Nyllia, the people down there want me to be their translator. And they want me to tell you this first thing: You need to wait an hour or so, because they're bringing the President here to open a dialogue with you. Peaceful relations and all. The President is the leader of every human on this continent, and the head of the entire government system of the United States. You can't get any higher than him.*

*All right. Tell the humans by the home that I say thank you, and that I hope it will be a pleasure to meet their leader.*

*Okay.* Annabelle shook her head, rubbed at her eyes. _I feel like an owl._


	9. A World of Understanding

_**September 12, 1998**_

Incessant. Unending. Ear-bursting.

 _Crying_.

Unfortunately, thanks to the soundproofing charms around the room, she was the only one to hear it.

Annabelle fell out of bed, snatched her wand off the nightstand, and stumbled her way across the room to the bundle of blankets in the corner. She pointed her wand at herself and vanished her top away, and then practically fell onto the floor. She scooted across the carpet, reached into the blankets and checked her wailing firstborn son for any bathroom issues - nothing to worry about there. Then she scooped him up out of the makeshift nest, away from his five siblings. Those five siblings being comprised of two girls and three boys: the girls were Aki and Jemma (a compromise between Anju's "Jemru" and Annabelle's "Jenny"), and the boys were Shyri (shy-ree), Ren and Tej (pronounced in almost a blending of "edge" and a general "shhh" noise that Anju SAID was pretty normal in her language).

All five of Kafe's siblings were all somehow still sleeping soundly. Annabelle _hoped to god_ it stayed that way.

Annabelle cradled her son to her chest as she carefully stood up. Then she tried getting him to nurse (was that what he needed?). He didn't take to it for very long; soon enough he was disengaging, turning his head away and keeping on with the _endless wailing._ Annabelle took up a fast pacing around the room - round and round - along with a rocking motion for him. She felt like crying, herself - hated herself for it. She almost sort of went on autopilot, keeping the motion, keeping the words coming out of her mouth but not really aware of any of it.

And it just. _Kept._ _Going._ For what had to be half an hour, Annabelle was convinced.

 _Quiet, quiet, stop it, stop-_ Annabelle caught herself. Her thoughts. _No._ She went back to the bed and lifted a foot - gave Anju a hard kick in the ass. "Anju! Get up, please, I can't do this, I can't- I don't know what to even- I need to-"

Anju fluttered her wings in a violent awakening. She snapped her gaze to Annabelle immediately, then to Kafe. She was wide awake. She hopped off the bed and muttered a phrase in her own language. An incantation. Suddenly her wings were changing, shrinking and shriveling until they were replaced with feathered arms. Not quite the same as a human's, but good enough to use. She reached for Kafe with talon fingers, took him out of Annabelle's arms and into her own. She took up the same rocking rhythm, took up whispering words meant to soothe. She didn't have any better luck than Annabelle.

Anju glanced at Annabelle. "Did you check him first for-"

"Yes," Annabelle snapped. "None of the _others_ are like this! It's almost, _almost easy_ getting any one of them to just- _they_ only cry when they _actually need something, but Kafe, he just-_ " She stopped. Bit down on her cheek so hard she felt blood loosing. They could join the tears now falling down her face, then. Sorry," she added, immediate. Her throat was strained to hell. Even to herself, her voice didn't sound pretty. "I'm sorry. I just- don't know what-"

"It's all right," Anju assured, over their son's cries. "You can go downstairs for a few minutes - collect yourself."

"Maybe get some sleep..." Annabelle said hopelessly, already starting off for the door.

"If you need it, you can rest about a half hour or so," Anju called after her.

Annabelle ground out an ugly, "Thanks." and shut the door with a hard slam.

Instant, glorious, absolutely heavenly _silence_ \- and a chance for sleep.

She stumbled down the stairs, wandered her way into the sitting room, and collapsed on the sofa. She shut her eyes and tried to breathe. She brought a shaking, flesh and blood hand to her face. She automatically began methodically tearing out her eyelashes. _Relief_. When she didn't have anymore left, she moved to her head, and began plucking out single strands. Single strands became multiple - which became handfuls. She tore it all out and threw it on the floor without even looking. She breathed. She cried.

 _Frustration._

She jumped up off the sofa and swore at the room. She kicked the entertainment stand. She seized the nearest bookshelf with her metal, enhanced arm and sent it crashing down without much of an effort. She turned and shoved her metal fist through the television screen. She picked that up too, and threw it across the room. She punched at the wall with her real hand, scraping and bloodying it without giving a damn. She tore the cushions off the sofa and threw them into the kitchen; then she picked up the sofa with her metal arm and turned it right over.

She screamed and swore and stomped, breaking everything in sight.

Footsteps barely registered in her deep, thrumming ears.

The lights turned on, and there was Lt. Phelps, rushing out of the hallway with a sidearm in hand - though pointed at the floor. He holstered it immediately on seeing Annabelle.

"Ms. Potter, are you all right? What's got you so-"

" _It's none of your fucking business, you nosy little shit!_ " Annabelle stalked up to Lt. Phelps and raised her metal fist at him. " _Get your ungrateful ass back into bed or I swear I'll beat you so hard this time you won't be able to open your eyes for weeks!_ "

"Ms. Potter..."

Annabelle's heart stopped beating a moment. A long, long moment. Something cold washed over her. She blinked. Looked around herself. Looked at her raised fist, then to Lt. Phelps. She lowered it, clutched it in her real hand and backed away. "I- I almost- oh my god, I..."

"Ms. Potter, it's fine; you didn't do _me_ any harm, and I assume you can just fix this whole mess up with a snap of your fingers? There's nothing to be so upset about. Whatever it is, it's fine. You're fine. You hear me?"

Annabelle let out a half laugh, half sob, and just sort of fell to the floor. She sat among glass, wood, and plastic.

Lt. Phelps sat right down with her, his legs crossed and his hands on his knees. He looked at her, up and down, then fixated very intently upon her face. "Ms. Potter, you want to...get decent for me here please?"

" _No._ "

"Righty, then," Lt. Phelps sighed, shaking his head at her. "You do love New York, so...right, rock that topless look if you want." He hesitated then reached out and put a hand on her bare shoulder. "You want to talk about what caused the total meltdown you had?"

" _Babies - kids. My kids!_ " Annabelle wiped at her running nose. She grabbed Lt. Phelp's wrist and pulled herself forward, and she leaned against him and just started heaving and bawling. " _It's only been four fucking days with this shit, and already I haven't slept for more than, what, three or four hours?! And it's just- all the time- and- I just feel so- even with Anju- and I have to do this for the next year? The next two? How long? How the hell does anyone- keep this up?! How do I even keep this up, if I can't last four days?! What the fuck kind of parent will I even be when I'm so fucked up in the head? I've cut myself, tried killing myself, I spent years in a cupboard, I hardly got to eat, I never went anywhere, I've beaten the shit out of my friends before, and I just almost- almost hurt you because...because no matter how hard I try, how much help I get, I'm still just like my aunt and uncle! That's- that's them, that's me: my first instinct is to hit it, to break it, to- and back there, in that room with my- my son, I felt that, and I...fuck, would I have done it? Would I have actually done it? Did my_ relatives _even go that far with me when I was just a baby? If they did, I can't even remember it. The first beating I remember, I was maybe four or five years old and I..."_

"Annabelle-"

"If you're calling me that, can I call you James?"

"Sure, kid. I think we're at that level with each other - you're here, just destroyed a whole room, got no shirt on, and you're crying your heart out into my shoulder, and I'm here holding you through it."

"Okay. James. You know my dead dad was named James too."

"Annabelle: you're eighteen. Eighteen years old, still in the _teens_. No matter what you've gotten done in the world, or how famous you are in your magical societies, or how mature you might seem to be most of the time...you're still just eighteen years old. You're a kid, sorry to say it. So all of this? This thrashing you gave the living room? All these thoughts and feelings yo have in you right now? It's all...expected. It's natural, it's okay. Now yeah, it wouldn't have been okay to hurt your kid over it - or bash my face in with that cybernetic arm of yours - but you didn't. And you recognize that it wouldn't have been okay to do it. That's good. That's incredible, for a kid your age, you know? For a kid, just a girl of eighteen, to have done what you've done, to have kept it together despite everything in your life, that's a miracle to witness. I've been impressed by you, just in this past week or so we've even known each other."

James drew breath. Patted her on the back. Started stroking circles. "That said, _you're still just eighteen_. So you're allowed to feel these things, to think these things, and to...maybe get it all out of you. Not how you did here - this wasn't exactly healthy, destroying things in anger and frustration - but at least you kept it in long enough not to hurt _people_. No, how you can get it out is by sitting here with me now and talking about it all. Tell me every thought you have, every fear, every worry - doesn't matter how stupid or even how screwed up you might think it is. I want you to tell me. Just sit here, just get this all out. Or if you don't want to talk just yet, just...cry it out. As much as you can. You'll feel better after, I promise you that, kid."

"Do you- do you have any experience with b-babies?" Annabelle quavered out, still burying her head in James' shoulder. "Anything to...help me?"

"Turns out I do, yes." James let out a chuckle. "I have three kids - all grown. But I remember those early days like yesterday. They were hell, I won't dress it up. But I made it through it. Because I had my wife, and we talked, and we worked with each other, and...and we just didn't give up. That is the most important thing. I know it's a reason why a lot of people tend to walk away - they hear they're having a baby and they just get so damn terrified they book it - but I'd hate to see that be your reason. I'd hate to see you walk away. Ms. Anju is a sweet, gentle sort, and your kids need you. They _need_ you, Annabelle. As much as it might be hell, like tonight, or worse...you just can't walk away. You can't just throw in the towel and give up."

"Can you tell me...honestly...does it get easier? When will it get easier? I want it to be easier!"

"Can't say, sorry kid. Some one and a half year olds will just be these quiet things, and some four year olds will just bug you to hell and back and not give you anything but five to ten minutes to yourself. And when you have more than one kid, that sometimes can overlap. Again, sorry to say, but you having six...it might be a good few years until you can get back to your life at all. But that's the sacrifice of having kids - they need you, they need your life for theirs. That's what you do, you devote to that, you keep with it. Doesn't matter how you feel, what you think: you stick to it."

"I- _I feel like running,_ " Annabelle whined. "I don't want to be here, I don't want to do this, I don't want to _be this_. I can't do this, I can't! I've- been all over the world, been in life or death situations, but this is just...it's insane, and it hurts, and I feel like exploding and overflowing, and _I'm so fucking scared of it all!_ "

"It's good to say it. Just get it out. But don't actually plan on doing it, okay kid? You can vent, you can yell it to the world and you'd be justified about it - no one would blame you, I won't blame you - but don't actually do it. You got me?"

"I wish my parents were here...I want them to help me. I can't do this..."

"I can't imagine - just know it's a tough break. I have a friend who...let's say _came out to me_ as a wizard this past week. Over the phone. And he told me all about you. Your past, your life so far - at least, what news publications have to say about your life so far. He told me about how your parents were murdered by some great, psychotic terrorist. How you lived. The Girl Who Lived, that's your moniker, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Funny they gave me that title; if they only knew how many times I've tried making myself The Girl Who Died already..."

"Tell me, kid, are you thinking about that now?"

"Right now? No. Maybe later, I don't know. Sleep deprivation is bad for your mental health. So is extreme, acute stress."

"Yeah, it tends to be, you're right about that. If you start thinking that way, you tell me. Got it? Can't have the girl I'm tasked with protecting offing herself under my watch. You'd put a heck of a blemish on my record."

Annabelle laughed. She sniffled all her nose's contents back up into herself. Lifted her head at last. "I'll tell you if I do."

"And you'll tell Anju? Or Ms. Norberta out in the yard?"

"Sure, yeah, whatever. I'll tell them too."

"I want you to make that a promise, kid. I don't know if you and Anju are...married - it's amazing that you can do that in your world, though; you said the woman from the diner was your ex wife? - but you should tell her. Talk to her. All of this, everything we just had here? You have that with her, or neither of you are getting through this okay. And your kids will suffer for it."

"I gave Kafe to Anju, before I came down here. She told me to. Said I could. Apparently harpies just don't need to sleep all that much, so _she's_ doing just fine! That also explains why all our kids keep giving me hell every couple hours..."

"That's good. Then you two've already got some good communication going on. Keep that up, make sure not to hold back, okay?"

"Okay."

"Righty. So, kid, you want to clean this mess up? Show me some real, useful magic besides the slaughter of a show you put on for the news?"

Annabelle nodded. She stood. Rubbed her eyes. She took out her wand and concentrated, then gave it a general wave: everything in the room flew around, repaired itself, went back to its original position.

"That's it?" James touched the restored television screen with disbelief. "All that damage you did, and it really took you just five seconds to put it all back to rights? There aren't even any lines or creases, no stitches? It's just, it was broken one moment, now it's whole?"

"Uh-huh. Magic."

"Well..." James moved over to the couch. Gave the arm a pat. Looked her in the eye. "Why don't you get that rest, kid? And tomorrow morning, you'll talk to Anju?"

Annabelle fell onto the couch, turned on one side and curled up into a ball. "Yes. Promise."

"I'll hold you to that." James gave her a smile, a last nod, and then he wandered off back down the hall, shutting the lights off as he left.

Annabelle closed her eyes, and fell asleep in no time at all.

* * *

 _ **September 13, 1998 - Themyscira Island**_

In a stone chamber deep underground, Annabelle was conversing with her best friend. Helen was standing by the door, arms crossed, simply observing them. Making sure Daphne didn't hurt anyone.

"Daphne," Annabelle implored. "I need you to be at your best for me. You're going to see someone, talk to her, and...just try not to be scared, or-"

"Therapy?" Daphne questioned, narrowing her disturbing, pure black eyes. "Make me talk? About...what happen to me?"

Annabelle shook her head. "No, it's not a therapist, but it is about what happened to you. I'm sorry, but there are some things I need to know, things I need information about, and you and her are the only ones I can get any of that out of right now. So, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to remember things you maybe don't want to for me. Can you do this for me, Daphne? Please?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Annabelle nodded to Helen. "Bring her in, please. Let's see how this goes."

The other prisoner was led into the stone room, bound in chains and flanked by two of the toughest-looking women Annabelle could ever have imagined - but still she walked in with her head high.

The effect on Daphne was immediate.

"Maria?!" Daphne shot to her feet, lunged forward - the chains brought her up short, and pulled her back down again. " _You escape! Knew you would - saw you, saw him - hurt, so sad, I saw-_ "

" _You left me alone._ " The twisted woman's voice was as Daphne's: a strange echo running under it, and a distortion throughout it. But there was also something else in there, something Daphne didn't have in hers - hate.

Daphne shrunk back against the wall, as if trying to disappear into it. Her face twisted with grief. " _Not mean to- not- want to- I- you said- said run- said go- I went to help! To Annabelle! Say, she can help! She can! She can! I promise- I promise-!_ "

"When will you put her down?" Maria sighed, turning to Annabelle. "She's broken, she can't be fixed - she's a failure. Why do you keep her here? Do you get pleasure out of seeing her like this?"

"I'm keeping her here because I believe she _can_ be fixed," Annabelle said calmly. She backed up to the edge of the room and leaned against the cool stone wall.

"Not have success - got chained up," Daphne stated, giving an irritated _huff_ and rattling the aforementioned chains - much more like the Daphne that Annabelle had grown up with and known; it almost made her smile. "And not _fun_ chained up, this _shit_ chained up," she added, shaking her head. Her snow white hair shimmered with every motion.

Maria smirked. "Good."

"Okay, what's your problem with Daphne?" Annabelle interjected. "Backstory, please. Something about leaving you? Behind, to die? Is that it? I can understand that, you'd be perfectly entitled to your feelings on it, _but_ -"

"I'm _very_ close to perfection," Maria interrupted, fixing Annabelle with a look of total disdain. Her voice just _flooded_ with smugness - and _spite_. "whereas she's not. She'll never become perfect, not like me. Not like the rest. She's a waste, a failure - trash belongs in the trash."

"That is some insanely heavy Stockholm going on there in your head," said Annabelle, letting her hand drop from her hip. She looked between Maria and Daphne, and all she could feel was heartache.

"Stockholm?" Maria laughed, and it came out sounding like a grinding, serrated knife-on-metal type of noise. Not pleasing on the ears in the slightest. "No, it's simple truth."

"Really? How long have you been on the road to perfection?" Annabelle casually inquired.

Maria's eyes lit up with satisfaction, with excitement, with _anticipation_ at the mere mention of such a road. "Twelve years."

"Right. And you're how old, exactly?"

"Twenty-six."

"Yeah - Stolkholm it is." Annabelle turned away from Maria, focused on Daphne. "Daphne, listen, I'm sorry your friend is so ill. We're going to work on getting her all deprogrammed, though. We'll bring in experts, trusted people from some magical society. We'll get sessions arranged for her, and maybe meds, whatever it takes. She'll be back to herself eventually. Maybe weeks, months, years...but she will. Just like you. Just like we're going to work as hard as we can to get you back to normal."

"Even if you do rob me of my chance for perfection," Maria began, in a tone that suggested she'd taken nothing but _offense_ to Annabelle's assurances. "others will still reach it in my stead. They will carry on where I couldn't, and they'll do what we're all meant to do. And they'll do it for me."

" _Not worried,_ " Daphne snorted, tossing her head, her hair, like she would always do as a child. "When I am normal...when Mari normal...can help them after. Help them...be normal too. If some not...want normal... _cannot_ be normal...then sad, but kill."

"We'll talk about that," Annabelle said sternly. "But not right now. Right now...Mari, I want to know why you were there at the diner - you and the other person."

"Isn't it obvious? Daphne ran right to you, and her being loose in the world means she can be found, spoken with, and studied - that isn't something She wants, again, for obvious reasons. So She sent myself and Stross to kill you, to keep whatever you might have learned or heard from Daphne from getting out to anyone else."

"Stross?" Annabelle noted. She looked at Daphne. "Did you know a-"

" _Ryan Stross,_ " Daphne exclaimed, like she had just gotten the right answer on a really difficult test. She frowned. " _He...give me food, help train, help fight, help not hurt...anymore. After. Like him._ _Dead now?_ "

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"He'll be remembered," Maria said fiercely. "When I go back, I'll make sure none of the others forget him. He did _good_."

"I'm sure you believe that - that you'll go back to your captors, _abusers_ \- and I'm sorry you do."

" _We not go back,_ " Daphne said firmly, smiling at Maria. "Free now. Safe now. You forget? Made promise..."

"I changed my mind after you never actually came back for me. Where were your _friends_? Where was _help_? The great _rescue_ you promised? Do you know what happened to me when She found me outside? When she _knew_ that I'd been with you, helping you get free? _When she knew I wanted to be_ free _too? To sink right back into a pathetic, disgusting life of boredom, of mediocrity? Everything she had done for me, everything she taught me...I wanted to throw it all away, because you convinced me to! Do you know what she did to me when she saw all of that in my mind?_ "

"Sorry. I...sorry. Very sorry. Could not go back," Daphne pleaded, rattling her chains once more and ducking her head in indication. "Stuck here. Not let leave. Annabelle talk, others watch, magic not-"

" _Our magic is beyond theirs! How couldn't you just get out of this, how can't you do that right this very moment?_ "

"How can't _you_?" Annabelle spoke quietly.

Maria looked at her with raw, murderous desire. But she said nothing in response. Nothing at all.

"Who's this 'She' you keep referring to?" asked Annabelle, wanting to bring things back to their original purpose. "The one who's responsible for these kidnappings? For the experiments? For the brainwashing?"

" _She_ is the one helping us to become the most perfect, most powerful beings on this entire planet."

"Uh-huh. Okay. Want to throw me a name here? Description?"

Maria did her best to spit at Annabelle from across the room. "You lowlifes don't deserve to even speak Her name."

Annabelle sighed. "Right. I'll ask Daphne - Daphne, could you tell me who was holding you captive all those weeks? What her name was, how she looked? Did you see?"

"Saw," Daphne confirmed, a shiver running through her. "Talked to. Screamed at her - lots...at first. Not...make things better. I stop...stopped soon." She was quiet for nearly ten seconds, her eyes furrowed, her lip being bitten into. She seemed to be doing her absolute best to form coherent, much more full sentences; she knew this was important. "Her name...Ellesmere? Met Maria after. We share room. Talked. Say...about before. Our lives. I tell her...we can leave. Escape. If...we are...together. I say, to her, _I have a plan_. I did, we did. I got out of...underground place. I heard guards - followed us. I tell Maria, I will go, I will get help. I did...find help...but help chain me here," she finished, slow and halting. A face of wide eyes and quivering lips faced Annabelle.

"Ellesmere. All right. Now can you tell me, what did she look like?"

"Tall. Black hair. Heart face. Small nose. Chest have...big scar? Birthmark? Not know. Saw it...only one time. Mark go across, left to right, down. Curve to hip."

"Alright. Thank you, Daphne. At least now I have a bit to work with, instead of nothing. You've been a huge help, you've been- really good. Real good for me, and I'm so glad to have you back. That you're safe, and free again."

"Be more free not chained," Daphne strung together, shooting an annoyed look at Helen. "More free not... _here_."

"I know what you mean," Annabelle smiled. "It's the same problem I'm having now. Can't go out, can't really do anything, because of all the dangers out there, just waiting to spring out and get me. You'd have that too, sorry to say. But, what if we could at least get you your help in the same place as mine? Would you like to stay with me? If you can behave, and stay put?" she added firmly.

"Yes - promise," Daphne said quickly. "Off chains, take away. Please. Promise listen."

"Okay." Annabelle waved her wand, and the magic chains disappeared.

Daphne stood up, at her full, new height. She looked down at Annabelle, all smiles. "Feels better."

"Yeah, I bet. I'm sorry you had to be like this, while they had you here."

Daphne looked at Maria. Stared into her eyes. Black on black. Then, with all the cruelty - and coherency - she could muster, she said, "Fuck you, for try to kill _my best friend_." She strode from the room with exaggerated _hip swing_ , and raised a clumsy hand to flip Maria off without looking back.

 _That is definitely still the girl I knew_ , thought Annabelle, following Daphne out.

* * *

 _ **US Government Safehouse - Unknown location**_

Annabelle and Daphne appeared in the sitting room with a loud crack (a deliberate thing on Annabelle's part: the security detail liked to have a bit of warning when people were popping in and out of reality - she'd scared the hell out of quite a few of them with silent apparitions before, leading at least one of them to comment on how she was as terrifying as a horror movie slasher).

"This is her, then, is it?" said James Phelps, eyeing Daphne up and down. There was the slightest hint of wariness as he took in the claws - or maybe it was just due to her looking similarly to Maria and the deceased Ryan Stross from the diner attack.

"Yeah," Annabelle confirmed, squeezing Daphne's hand and throwing a smile up at her. "This is Daphne. Thank you for allowing me to bring her here. She really needs it. She needs a room, she needs the help. And she needs to get it all in a safe place."

"Well, we've got two spare rooms upstairs - she can pick one," James replied. "Furnish it however she likes, I'm sure, with magic."

"That won't be a problem," Annabelle assured. "No one has to go out furniture shopping. We'll just get a few sticks and pebbles, do some transfiguration, and maybe a couple conjurations and we'll be good to go here."

"Right. Show her upstairs, then. Get to it. Make her comfortable. I'll put in a call to my wizard friend and ask him about any home caretakers or whatever you might have in your societies that's an equivalent."

"I'll pay for Daphne's sessions, all her potions - her meds - whatever it takes," Annabelle said, nodding. "You won't have to worry about that, either. I'm a rich woman."

"So I hear," James chuckled. He motioned toward the stairs - shot a meaningful look at his two fellow officers standing around in the kitchen. "Really though, get her up, if you would? I don't want her down here feeling crowded - certainly not by strangers."

"Sure." Annabelle gave Daphne's hand a tug, started off for the stairs. After careful climbing of the steps, they moved down the hall, passed many doors until they came to the last two on the right. Annabelle opened both of them, gestured inside. "So, Daphne: which one do you want?"

Daphne chose the very last room. A bit larger, with a nice window view of the field, and the woods beyond.

Annabelle smiled. "Good choice."

* * *

After helping Daphne set up her room, and spending a bit of time with her, Annabelle wandered outside to chat with a recently-arrived Norberta and Emerich. She returned to the house after, had a quick lunch - simple sandwiches - then she went upstairs and entered her and Anju's room.

And they talked, too. Started to. Annabelle didn't get very far into near-hysteric ramblings of a sleep-deprived woman until...

"If you can't handle this, just as a simple fact of biology, then I can do this on my own," Anju spoke in gentle tones. "I'm not a stranger to raising children - growing up myself in Rynegaul, I helped a few different families when I could. Our community has always been a _community_ , with everyone doing their part for everyone else. That sometimes included looking after more than a few babies."

"Explains why you're so damn good at it..."

"Yes, it does! And if you're not, that's fine! If you want to...if you want to sit out these first, early, hectic weeks, that's _just fine_. I promise you."

Much as Annabelle's brain was screaming at her not to say it... "Skip the hard stuff and just drop in when it's easy? No, no, I won't do that, Anju. I'd feel like shit afterward, for the rest of our lives, probably. And besides, our kids need both of us. They need me - for more reasons than just the practical and obvious; they have to bond with me in those early times, don't they? I have to bond with them, or I'm not going to feel anything for them. Or maybe just...less than I should. And I don't want that. Not for them. I'll stick to it, Anju, I'm not going anywhere. I'd just...like a few more hours of sleep every twenty-four hours or so, that's all - sorry, can't help being human, we need at least seven or eight hours to be considered healthy."

"For your health, I can give you that," Anju assured. She embraced Annabelle in her wings, brushing her bare backside, covering her like blankets. Warm, soft. She kissed her. "I've never been around so many humans before, and not for so long, so I think this is partly my fault too - I had no idea you had such different needs than my people, than harpies. I'd thought it was simple inexperience getting to you, not your health. I didn't know you were suffering so terribly over it, and I am so sorry for that."

"Yeah, well, we've got it sorted out now," said Annabelle, trying to smile.

"We do."

"Thank you."

* * *

Late in the evening, Annabelle again found herself spending time with Daphne. Not for pleasure, though, and not really to help her in any immediate sense of things. However...

"Daphne, do you think you could do something for me?"

Daphne just looked at her, curled up on the bed and swathed in blankets as she was then. Her lips held a smile. "Yes. What?"

Annabelle got up from the desk and moved over to the bed - sat down beside Daphne. She touched her hip, stroked with an idle thumb. "I'd like to have some of your memories. Specifically, some memories from your time...wherever you were...and from your escape from that place - before you found me in that hospital."

"How?" said Daphne, the height of dubiousness.

"I've never done it myself - only seen it - but I've been told it's a natural thing," Annabelle said patiently. She offered her wand to Daphne. "Here: you can use mine for it, since you don't have yours anymore."

Daphne freed a lengthy arm from the covers. She took the wand in her clawed, thin hand. Held it up to her face and looked it over. "How?"

"Just...try to relax? Think about the things that I need you to think about, and then just...put your wand to your head and say the words, _Memoria Extractus_."

Daphne sat up very suddenly (even sitting, she towered over Annabelle). She frowned, stared down at the wand in her hand some more. This went on for nearly half a minute.

"Daphne, are you okay-"

"Quiet. Am _concentrating_ ," Daphne snapped, with a little huff to punctuate it.

"Sorry."

Several minutes passed before Daphne finally spoke the words - _"Memoria Extractus!"_ \- and began to pull a long, thin silver strand of memory from her mind. It stayed attached to the tip of Annabelle's wand as Daphne held it awkwardly about. "What now?" she asked.

"Now," said Annabelle, reaching out for her wand and its accompanying memories. "I put this all _here_ for safekeeping-" She conjured a flask and stuffed the strand into it. "-and I take it somewhere it can actually be used." She stood, gave Daphne's cheek a caress. Gave her a smile. "You did great, Daphne, thank you."

"Welcome. Love you, best friend. But go away." Daphne disappeared under the blankets, long tresses of snow white hair the only part of her sticking out. "My room."

With a grin, Annabelle reached out and gave Daphne a hard poke. "Yeah, I love you too, _Daffy_."

Daphne shifted under the covers. "Fuck you!"

"Never going to happen."

"Out already! Out, out, out!"

Annabelle laughed. "All right, I'm going. Be back later tonight - hopefully in time for dinner." She focused her mind, and she performed a _very_ loud apparition out of Daphne's room and back into her own. She put on her jacket, brushed her hair back over her shoulders, and breathed. Where she had to go next...she'd need to make a little pit stop first.

She apparated again, reappearing inside a large, dark bedroom in Grimmauld Place. _Her_ bedroom. She opened up her old school trunk, pulled her Invisibility Cloak, along with the Marauder's Map, from dust and little broken bits and bobs - gave both of these items a proper brushing down with a loving hand. She contemplated going around the house in search of Sirius, but...no. She didn't want to have to tell him about Anju and their kids just yet - way too damn scary to even think about.

So Annabelle simply stuffed the Map in her jacket, donned her Cloak, and performed a third apparition to take her out of Grimmauld Place and on to her true destination.

Upon arrival, Annabelle navigated calm streets and little groups and individual villagers. She passed by shops and homes. She couldn't help the face-hurting grin that came over her. She looked ahead, far ahead, and took in the magnificent castle in the distance. Standing there just the same as the very first time she had arrived here at the age of eleven.

 _Hogwarts, I'm home._

* * *

"You've been _quite_ busy since you left these halls, haven't you, my dear girl?"

" _How do you always do that?!_ " Annabelle pulled off her Cloak, strode across the Headmaster's office, and threw her arms around Albus Dumbledore's middle. " _How do you always just_ know?"

Dumbledore stared down at her with nothing but amusement as he returned her hug. "Perhaps one day I will indeed divulge my most closely guarded secrets to you - but alas, that day is not today," he added, utterly affectionate. They drew apart, and Dumbledore's face was overcome with the slightest of frowns. He took her in, and the frown deepened. "How have you been, Annabelle? Forgive me, but you look-"

"Like total shit, I know, but I'll get better," Annabelle cut across, laughing. "And how about you?"

"I must admit to not being at my best in recent days," Dumbledore began mournfully. "The Ministry has been requiring my constant attentions - and the Minister himself has been writing me nigh endless letters." He waved an absent hand, and a bowl of candies appeared in the air beside him. He plucked it out of the air and held it out to Annabelle. She took two without hesitating, started unwrapping them. Dumbledore watched her a moment, a delighted twinkle to his eyes, before he went on with, "Of course, it was quite a shock to learn the source of all this commotion inside the Ministry! The Statue of Secrecy torn away, calls for the ICW to convene every other hour, reports of dragons in New York City, a renegade fairy, and a miniature army of magi-arachnids on the loose! And when the Ministers and other various Heads of States moved to meet with their muggle counterparts, why they were met with small armies of muggles who were _very_ prepared and willing to harm them - and some of them did, in fact, do harm to quite a few mages. It was all _very_ chaotic and, again, so very shocking. And it hasn't lessened any this past week: we've had calls and meetings forced by muggle leaders, reports all over the globe about assaults on mage neighbors by muggles, as well as the opposite. All of it very unfortunate. Now, imagine my surprise when I learned the very source of all this trouble. When I learned justwhat it was that had caused such a fire to spread across the world!"

"Or rather, just _who_ had caused such a fire to spread across the world," Dumbledore amended, that twinkle gaze of his growing more intensely emotional. Annabelle looked down at her own feet, twisted her hands together at her waist. "When I uncovered the identity of this incredible, wonderful, _brave_ young woman I couldn't have been more proud."

Annabelle lifted her head in an instant. "Really?"

"Of course!" Dumbledore exclaimed, grasping her arms as if he were about to sweep her into another hug. "Annabelle, what have I always said?"

"Choosing to do what's right versus what's easy, yeah..." Annabelle trailed off, shook her head. "But I still threw the world into chaos. Like you just said, some people have been hurt or killed over it - and they will be, later. It'll take a while to...die down."

"Yes, you did, and yes, they will. And that is a regrettable price to have to pay for a better future for us all - but it is one we must pay. We will feel the weight of it for the rest of our lives, we will remember it, but we will still continue moving forward."

"Yeah. So you definitely think I did the right thing?"

"I do," Dumbledore said firmly. "Perhaps what was done should not have been done in so spectacular and _abrupt_ a manner, but you got the job done all the same," he added, smiling at her.

"Thanks." Annabelle dug into her jacket, pulled out the vial of memories. She held it up for Dumbledore to see. "These are Daphne's. Did you read in the papers about how she went missing? Did you know she had a few warrants out for her?"

"I did read about that, yes." Dumbledore scrutinized the vial closely. "I also have heard about her having made an appearance at the hospital the day you changed the world. Of course, she was reported to have vanished along with the rest of those admirable people who put in appearances to support you and your cause. I presume you have been keeping her somewhere since that encounter?"

"Yeah. A few different places, actually. Things with her are...complicated, a little relieving, but mostly just sad." Annabelle sighed. She strode over to the desk and conjured up a chair - seated herself in it. Dumbledore followed after her, sat down across the desk from her. "She didn't actually do what everyone thinks she did to me - wasn't her. She was actually being held prisoner in some...horrible place. She was tortured, experimented on, along with more than a few others, I think. I've already met two more from the same place: one of them is dead, and the other one is being held somewhere safe. I had Daphne meet with the other one, a woman named Maria, and I tried to get as much information as I could out of them both. Maria wasn't too cooperative - she's brainwashed, all Stockholm-y. So I had to use Daphne as my main source. She agreed to do the memory extraction charm, to give me a few memories from her time in captivity, and now...here I am."

"And you require the use of my pensieve in order to uncover a much greater wealth of information on the ones responsible for doing all of this to Miss Greengrass," said Dumbledore, nodding at her. "I will, of course, allow you to use it to your heart's content. I will only ask that you copy these memories and give them to law enforcement - as well as a written document containing every bit of information you have heard from word of mouth, every speculation and theory you might have. If there are still other people out there undergoing such a terrible ordeal as Miss Greengrass and this Maria, then the law enforcement agencies of the world will be more than capable of handling it. Much more so than you yourself alone ever could, I'm sorry to say - you are, after all, still just one woman. One extraordinary, strong, and highly capable woman, yes...but still only one person alone."

"Agreed. But this won't leave me alone," Annabelle replied. "Maria and another, the dead one, a man named Ryan Stross, were sent to kill me because I had Daphne. Because she could talk, and be studied for what she was almost turned into. Now that I have Maria, and Stross is dead - giving the world _another_ corpse to study - I'm not betting on the mastermind being happy with just letting me live out my life peacefully."

"Could Miss Greengrass provide any clues as to the identity of said mastermind?"

Annabelle shrugged. "Not much. Just a physical description, a bit about a big defining scar or something down her front, and a name: Ellesmere."

"A highly uncommon name, I believe," Dumbledore mused. "That should make things easier for law enforcement to investigate her."

"Great. There's something else I want to talk about here. A big, important part of this. So, yeah, uh, when Maria and Stross attacked me, Lisa was there too. She recognized...parts of them. She said they looked elven, almost. But, not really... _fully_ elven. That's the goal, the reason for it all. Ellesmere is trying to turn humans into elves, just for power. A bunch of brainwashed mage supersoldier types. I don't know what she's going to do with them all after she gets the results she's looking for, though."

"Ahhh...one of the oldest mysteries of this world. The original elven species - so-called 'pure' elves."

"You know about them?"

"I have heard a little bit about them, here and there," Dumbledore elaborated. "Theories and speculation about them have been constantly circling around the greatest of minds, capturing their imaginations like no other. The sparse facts that we have uncovered about them over the years, little pieces of evidence - a structure here, an ancient document there - have only spurred theorists and researchers on further."

"What about you?"

"My areas of theory and research have always been more elemental and mystical than historical or biological - even among mages," Dumbledore answered. "However, I do keep up with other well-known researchers, and so I do know that even to this day there has been nothing more reported found from ancient elven civilization than a few buildings and a few scattered pages. No great treasure trove - in other words, nothing that could have ever led someone like this Ellesmere to discovering how to transform humans into elves, down to even altering the very nature of their magic."

"Unless someone did - maybe Ellesmere herself?" Annabelle ventured. "Maybe they just kept quiet about it. Kept it to themselves."

Dumbledore inclined his head. "That is always a possibility."

"So..."

"Would you care to view the memories now?" Dumbledore inquired, gesturing to the cabinet where he had always stored the pensieve.

"Yeah. Yeah, I just...could you come with me? Be there with me? Please?"

He smiled at her. "Of course, Annabelle."

Annabelle stood. "Thank you."

Together, they approached the pensieve...


	10. Darker Nights

**Authors note: Thanks for reading my story, also if you want to please leave reviews! But I will only accept CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND ADVICE, not harassment!**

* * *

Annabelle stumbled back from the pensieve, her hands over her ears and her eyes shut tight. The office swayed under her feet. She felt sick rising in her throat. She jerked a hand down over her mouth, drew in a shaking breath-

And she puked.

She fell to hands and knees, and she heaved and cried.

 _Daphne..._

A gentle hand on her back, rubbing circles. A quiet, soothing voice in her ear.

"Annabelle, that was then, not now. Daphne is safe, safe under your care. Free and well as she can be." Despite his words, Dumbledore's voice held a slight tremor to it - a note telling of disgust, and still-lingering shock.

"I- gotta go get back to her-" Annabelle choked. She wiped at her mouth and stood up again. She picked up her Invisibility Cloak off the floor, shoved it into the waistband of her jeans, and pulled on her jacket. She headed for the door with a swimming head and shaking shoulders. With arms wrapped around her middle. "Check on her- dinner- wash her up-"

"Annabelle, I don't believe you're in any right state to apparate," Dumbledore called after her. "You're likely to splinch yourself, perhaps even fatally. I would advise you to stay a while - I can take you to the hospital wing for a-"

"Gotta get back to her..." Annabelle murmured, pulling open the door with a distant, numb hand and starting down the spiral staircase. "Gotta see her again...she needs me..."

 _She screamed for me. She begged for me. Every time, all the time, it was always for me._

* * *

"Back now?" Daphne spoke, sitting up in her bed. She gestured with a long arm to the food tray on the nightstand. "Ate already." She snorted, shook her head. "You get nothing! Nothing from-"

Annabelle sat down on the bed and wrapped her arms around Daphne's lanky figure. Leaned into her, and started stroking her arm.

"-me," Daphne finished quietly. "Sad? What- for?"

"You," whispered Annabelle, soft as she could.

Daphne wrapped long arms around Annabelle, and she lowered herself back onto the bed - took Annabelle with her. Her grip tightened; her claws dug into Annabelle's ribs. " _Found you,_ " she breathed, in nothing but warm, happy tones.

"Found you, too, Daffy..."

They lay together for many long minutes, not kept track of - not known; didn't matter. Uncared for. Each other, were the only things they cared about in these many minutes.

Annabelle eventually had to move. Only, she realized Daphne had fallen asleep with her. She apparated from out of Daphne's embrace, to reappear in the kitchen downstairs. She shed her jacket, threw it on the back of a chair at the little round table. She pulled her Cloak from her jeans and tossed it onto her jacket.

She was rummaging around the cabinets for something to make, when Gertrude entered the kitchen.

"You missed damn good food," Gertrude rasped out, a wide grin splitting her face. She climbed up onto a chair and brushed her disheveled, dirty black hair out of her eyes. "Lieutenant Phelps...oh, the things he can cook up. You humans eat this sort of thing all the time, though, don't you? It probably doesn't taste like anything special. But me...I choked up all that flavor. It's goddamn overwhelming!"

"I can't really imagine," responded Annabelle; she shifted a few boxes and cans around in a high cabinet.

"You can stop screwing around with that stuff - we left you a plate in the fredger...fridgeter...the cold box," Gertrude finally settled on, letting loose a joyous but throaty cackle.

Annabelle opened the fridge - found the plate. She took it out, walked over to the table and sat down beside Gertrude. She smiled, gave her cheek a little caress. "Thank you, Gertrude. That was really thoughtful of everyone."

"Wasn't _my_ thought," Gertrude chortled, shaking her head.

Annabelle shrugged, reached for a handful of cooled pasta. "Yeah, well, you still pointed me to the-"

"Where's your fork?"

"What?"

Gertrude mimed the use of a fork, jabbed a claw at the plate. "Human culture. You eat with those metal sticks - you're the one who told me how big of a rude move it was to not do that," she reminded. "I didn't do it at dinner tonight, didn't even need to be told not to," she continued on proudly.

"Not every human culture uses them," Annabelle responded, picking at her noodles and stuffing them into her mouth. She set an elbow on the table, rested her arm.

"See, now you're doing _that_ too-"

"Gertrude: I don't care," Annabelle interrupted. "Not tonight. Just be yourself for me and try not to care, yourself, okay?"

Gertrude frowned at her. Shrunk down into her chair. "Did someone piss on you while you were off doing whatever you were doing?"

"What?"

"What? It's happened to me once." Gertrude's face was overtaken by a sudden grin. "Actually no, it's happened twice - second time, I asked for it, from this really crazy giantess named Kigari-"

"I don't care," Annabelle reiterated, clenching her teeth. "Let me eat - or, go away. Fuck. I don't care. Just shut up, fucking _shut up-_ "

Gertrude leapt up onto the table, took two steps forward, and then she kicked Annabelle's plate clear across the kitchen. It shattered; her food splattered all over the floor. Gertrude raised her hands and flipped Annabelle off in stereo, then turned and jumped off the table, and quickly left the kitchen.

Annabelle stared after her. She let her head smack down onto the table, and she started to cry. _Frustration, helplessness -_ things way too common inside of her these days, she reflected.

* * *

 _ **October 31, 1998 - Las Vegas, Nevada**_

Annabelle ran, leapt, apparated in the air and reappeared several blocks ahead. She set her jaw, threw her shoulders back and raised her wand - flourished and chanted; and around her the barrier formed, rose up and became a great dome just as the rampaging Nundu closed the distance between them so unbelievably fast.

The barrier coalesced, solidified itself around them, trapping Annabelle and the Nundu at the intersection. The Nundu who was large enough to take down and eat elephants - which, some did, in other places in the world.

Annabelle kept her wand up as the Nundu's head whipped down, as those ferocious eyes found her. That mighty tail flicked behind him. Spotted fur rippled from the muscles beneath.

"What are you doing?" Annabelle said, clear and loud.

The Nundu let out a deep growl that was simultaneously low in volume yet so thunderous it rippled through Annabelle's body. He raised a massive paw, flexed his claws. Took up a pace, back and forth, always keeping his eyes on her. "I understand your words, Annabelle Potter."

"Okay, good. Then tell me why you're running around destroying everything, and causing a lot of serious harm to _people_."

"That is not my intent here tonight. I am _fleeing_."

"Fleeing? Okay," Annabelle nodded. Lowered her wand. She set her metal hand on her hip. "How about you tell me just _what_ you're fleeing from? Maybe I could help you; that's kind of my thing - don't know if you keep up with current events in the world."

"I am aware of who you are and what you do for those not born human."

"Great. So? Fleeing. What's got you so spooked that you're accidentally causing a lot of destruction and pain around here?"

"My...your human term is _wife_."

"Yeah?" Annabelle nodded, patiently gazed up at the Nundu's face. "That's the word. What about it?"

"I'm _fleeing_ from _her!_ " the Nundu growled. "To you humans, I must seem great and dangerous - but to _me_ , _she_ is the great and dangerous one. Females of my species grow large enough to topple mountains. And she...is not pleased with me tonight. She wishes to consume me, as is customary in the...but I...I did not want to be killed, so I fled. I had been with her, in that... _society_ for many years, but now I cannot stand to be. I left it, I left her, and she wants to kill me for it."

"Okay. Are you talking about a city, or a...a government? Or...is this some kind of cult thing that you ran away from?"

"I do not know - that term, _cult_ , is not familiar to me." The Nundu shook their great, sleek head. "It does not matter what to call it. I am not a part of it, I have no _wish_ to be a part of it anymore, and _she_ is trying to eat me for it. I...I do not know where to go, I do not know who I should ask for help. I do not know _how_ to find help. Especially not among members and governments of other species. None of us are used to even considering such a thing as an option in times of crisis...and yet we all seem to be doing it recently."

"Well, you're talking to me right now," Annabelle smiled. Softened her voice. "I can help you with this - or at least help you get to somewhere safe, and somewhere that you can actually talk to human nonmage officials capable of and willing to assist you. They'll shelter you, give you food and water, protect you as much as they can. I promise."

"And my _wife_? When she comes here after my scent trail, she will not just cause the occasional damages and injuries as I have done tonight: she will trample over your entire city, and she will likely breathe on it."

"Right - toxic breath - I know your species has that," Annabelle nodded. "Okay, here's what we're going to do: I'm going to let this barrier down for you, and we're going to _not_ provoke anybody into shooting you with a lot of guns, or blasting you with a lot of spells - there are a few mage citizens here, and US Divison Aurors are going to be on the scene in a minute here. Here's what you're going to do for me: you're going to stay calm, stay relaxed, and you're going to tell the authorities everything you just told me. You're going to ask them for sanctuary, for protection, and they're going to give it to you. And if they don't...I'll personally take you someplace you won't have to worry about your wife finding you."

"I will accept human protection."

"Okay." Annabelle flourished her wand, undid all her enchantments. "Try and make yourself appear nonthreatening, would you?"

"Yes." A pause. "What will your people do when she comes? She will not stop following me, even if you move me, or surround me with your magic or your metal weapons. She will come, and she will kill to reach me."

"No clue," Annabelle said honestly. "I don't think anyone is prepared for some Godzilla Kaiju shit to go down anywhere - but we're going to prepare as best we can for it anyway."

"I'll try to help in whatever way I can."

"Thank you."

* * *

When Annabelle reappeared in the safehouse, James Phelps was waiting for her.

"What?" she asked.

James held up a phone, stretched out on a cord. "Long story short, there was a call from your Magical Britain Minister to our nonmagic president, who called the FBI, who called us, who put a call through between us and this Minister for Magic. He's just looking to talk with you. Might be good, might be bad - I don't know, kid. But if it's anything bad, tell me and I'll try to help."

Annabelle stepped over to James, taking the phone from him. "Thanks," she said. She raised the phone to her ear. "Hello, Minister Fudge?"

"Ms. Potter," Fudge's familiar voice came, in equally as familiar, friendly tones. Like nothing at all had happened in the world between now and the last time they'd met. "You've made me quite the busy man these past many weeks."

"I'm not going to apologize," Annabelle stated calmly, as _neutrally_ as she could. "And if you're hoping to ask me to come back to the Ministry for trial and sentencing, you'd better have your torture bullshit prison system sorted out already - if you haven't, forget about me even _thinking_ about showing up."

"We're still working on that," Fudge said airily. "I'm sure you're doing just fine - wherever you are - and I'll not inquire! No, no, why I'm calling you on this...telephone, is because I..you see, I'd like to offer you a job."

 _What?_ "You won't just try to arrest me the moment I show up?"

"No, I promise you," Fudge said quickly, all assurance. "Annabelle, my dear, if you were to take this job offer of ours, you'd be granted something of a pardon on my personal behalf - I do have the power to do that sort of thing, you know. You'd be free to return to our society, free to do as you wish, live as you wish - I'm sure you miss home? Being able to roam freely?"

"You're saying _free_ a lot."

"Yes, well, I know it's something you've always put high value in, particularly when it comes to yourself..."

"Because I spent the first ten years of my life in a little cupboard," Annabelle stated. "Right. Well, I'm not hurting for money here, so I assume you'll be getting a few benefits out of this pardon deal of yours?"

"It is partially self-interest, yes. But it is also coming from a standpoint of optimism and altruism! We want to offer you the position of official liaison between the British Ministry of Magic and the various nonhuman societies around the world. Ambassador, if you will."

"Ambassador Potter...Sounds a bit stuffy."

"How about _envoy_ , then? Envoy Potter?"

"Much more sleek and stripped down," Annabelle grinned to herself. "I could possibly accept that. What all would this position entail?"

"Well, besides being at the forefront of our relations with nonhuman governments, you'd also be sometimes required to...put in a good showing. The things you usually do, only with a few cameras pointed your way. Show the world exactly how you are: compassionate, open-minded, empathetic."

"Because the Ministry isn't coming off that way, so you need me to be your public face, change that for you?" Annabelle bluntly ventured.

"Yes," Fudge replied, a slight hesitation. Anxious. "Of course, I'm sure you're well aware that we've made our mistakes as a government, as a society, over the course of our history - and such mistakes aren't easily forgotten by...by many... _people_ out there. But we have begun to make changes, concessions, upon realizing our... _errors_. And now we would like to start making greater strides, bigger showings toward the other nations that we're very committed to continuing to change and improve. And that, we think, needs to start with reaching out to the downtrodden, damaged, or otherwise oppressed nonhuman societies. Sort of build them up after we kept them down, repair the things we broke for them, you understand?"

"I do," Annabelle said quietly. "And that sounds...like a reasonable plan of action, moving forward. Future generations will probably look back on you as the Minister who was progressive, and sympathetic to those who need it, and who led people out of a transitionary period and into a new era of prosperity, trade, and relations."

"Yes, yes, I imagine that would be so," Fudge agreed quickly. "So you see...Annabelle...would you be willing to help me do that? Help me keep our...our nation on track, so to speak? Help them push through this trying time and into a better one for all?"

"Yeah." Annabelle answered, after a moment's thought. "Like you said, just give me the pardon, just let me keep doing my thing - only now with actual, official government backing - and things _for you_ will keep on looking up. You'll reach the end of your term and become immortalized as one of the greatest Ministers in history or whatever. If you stick with it, and you don't backslide here. No matter your own personal views on things. You understand _me_ , Minister?"

"Oh, I'm well aware of the concept of- of keeping up appearances, don't worry about that. Thank you, then; we have a deal here." Fudge paused. "If you would, while I still have you, I'd like to...sort of _task you_ with something, a first mission of sorts. You see, I think, given the severity of the Azkaban fiasco, and the issues that surround it - _your_ issues with it - I think you should start with the Dementors. I assure you that we have been working very hard to deal with that little problem, to decommission its use as a prison these past few weeks! In fact, we have already erected extremely powerful, ancient barriers around that island, and now it only serves its original purpose that it had when it was first discovered so long ago: being the _home_ of the Dementor species."

"Right," Annabelle encouraged. "What exactly do you want me to do, or say to them?"

"Well, just...given their nature, and how averse they usually are to ever communicating with mages, we've kept barriers raised around that area of sea, sort of kept them confined to their territory, as I've said. A border control, a blockade, if you'd like to think of it that way. For everyone's safety. Most of the other mage nations have agreed with the action, but...still, quite baffling, there are a few muggle... _nonmagic_ nations rather, who still don't agree with it. They were pacified when we put an end to using it, and the Dementors, as a prison and as prison wards, but some of them still think that we need to try and open up a dialogue with them. Work something out - I'm not sure what, however. The original deal we had with the Dementors was near impossible to wrangle out of them to begin with, and individual Dementors have gone against the deal many times before. So I'd...I'd ask you, Annabelle dear, if you could go to Azkaban, go to the Dementors, and try to establish relations with them again."

"Anything specific, or just in general?"

"In general, I think, for now. Just trying...talking with them. Maybe weekly visits? Just a pop over once every few days? Eventually, it would be very good for us if you could influence them to...change themselves. Make a new deal with them, if you have to. Something like: turn yourselves into something resembling a restrained, civilized society, or face the consequences. The consequences being what we originally threatened them with to ensure they honored the deal: mass containment via transfigured prisons and unbreakable boxes. Dementors, see, are not intangible, and so they do have a real reason to fear being trapped for the eternity of their amortal lives at the bottom of the ocean, for example, or deep inside the Ministry. And they know we are capable of that if we all come together; they understand strength in numbers is what we have over them. Now the nonmagics, they don't really truly understand Dementors. What they're capable of. So it's- understandable. Their perspective is...a little naive, charming even, but it's not the reality of things as we know it to be. So, yes, I'd also ask you to maybe bring a few nonmagic ambassadors out to meet the Dementors with you once or twice. Show them how it feels, show them what they're like. Of course, I wouldn't ask you to just blindly bring such important government officials into the middle of a swarm of Dementors - maybe if you could get particularly close to _one_ Dementor, that would be safe enough?"

"I'll take all of this under consideration, and I'll get started within the next six hours," Annabelle said finally. "Consider me hired, Minister."

"Thank you, Annabelle!" Fudge oozed praise.

"You're welcome - though, I'm not doing this for your public image: I'm doing it for the Dementors themselves. Because they deserve to have a first chance to try to become something better, something more."

"Oh, I'm well aware," Fudge said honestly, seriously. "Annabelle - while I don't truly agree with your view of things, I do appreciate your efforts for what you've accomplished as matter of pure fact, and I'm impressed with it all. I've been impressed by you. You've done more in a few months than anyone has done in decades or centuries of life - except for perhaps Albus Dumbledore or Nicholas Flamel, of course. And I respect your dedication, and I respect your skillset. I really do. I just wanted you to know that: I respect and admire you, even if I don't agree with your worldviews."

"I appreciate the honesty," Annabelle returned. "And I appreciate _you_ for not smiling at me through your teeth. You told me what you wanted, why you wanted it, and how it could benefit you as much as me, as well as legitimately benefit other people. Which is fine with me - I'll just be looking more toward the benefit it affords others rather than how it reflects on you."

"That right there - that's what I admire about you, my dear lady. I haven't had anyone talk to me like that since my early Ministry years."

"Right. Give me that pardon, and I'll see you around." Without further ado, Annabelle hung up the phone. She cast a nonverbal summoning charm, and her jacket zoomed down from upstairs and into her hand. She looked at James, pulling her arms through the sleeves. "I'm going out again - I'm an _envoy_ now for my home government."

James smiled at her, a little exasperated. "I heard. Also heard you got a pardon; well done, kid - unless it's some kind of trap."

"If it is just a way to get me, I'm not going to walk into it like an idiot," Annabelle assured. "I'll walk into it with a few contingency plans - I love making those."

"That's the spirit, kid."

* * *

 _ **November 1st, 1998 - 7:49 PM - Azkaban Island**_

Annabelle stepped off the motorboat and onto the island's dark sands.

"Hey!" she called out to the nearest Dementor swarm, waving an arm in a wide sweep. " _Could one or two you please come over here for me?_ "

Annabelle didn't get one or two - she got several times that. Easily two dozen of them glided straight for her, at superhuman speeds that were nearly too fast for her eyes to track; all she was were blurry figures and motion trails left behind.

Annabelle felt the familiar chill grip her soul. She felt her throat closing up. She heard the voices...felt the terror...

 _"...not getting anything to eat today until you clean up this mess..."_

 _A hand across her face..._

 _Hands that found her in her bed, hands that drifted over her skin...under the thin little pieces of fabric she had to herself...long nails that curled, dug in deep inside her..._

Annabelle clenched her metal fist. Lifted her head and stared up into the shrouded hood of the Dementor in front of her, as several others closed in with outstretched, scabby hands. "All of you are going to stop this, right now. You're going to stand there, you're going to be _still_ , and you're going to listen to what I have to say. Or I'll cast the Patronus, and I'll shove all of you into little coffins and drop you all down into the bottom of this ocean. And after that? Well, who knows? I might forget just where I put you all..."

Several long, admittedly terrifying moments passed Annabelle by. Then- the Dementors retreated to a respectable distance, their arms lowering, their hands disappearing into the folds of their cloaks.

"Better," Annabelle said, and she smiled. She crossed her arms, gazed up at the Dementor that was directly in front of her. "You and me," she went on, pointing an absent finger from her chest. "let's talk." She drew her wand, transfigured a nearby rock into a plain old office chair to seat herself in. She rested her hands on her thighs, her wand still held between her fingers. The Dementor simply inclined their hood further, to keep her in their field of view proper.

 _Human...mage...why are you here?_ a voice rose in Annabelle's mind. Toneless, soft, pitched high so as to be nearly feminine. At least, what a human would attribute to being a feminine sort of voice. Who knew anything about Dementor biology? They could have been male, or both, or neither - or sometimes one, neither or both, and sometimes otherwise. _Your Ministry of Magic broke our agreement - and decided to imprison us here instead. Were they trying to starve us? We would have thought your kind had learned by now that we cannot die of starvation. Neither can we die from the passage of time, as your kind does. Why, then, do you keep us here? Here, alone?_

"Because you don't have any laws, or rules to yourselves," Annabelle said truthfully, leaning forward in her seat. "You're wild, and dangerous. You cause emotional and mental harm to people when you feed off of their emotions - when you draw out and destroy their optimism, their good memories, their love and their hope, and their joy. When you do that, just so you can get at the negativity inside them - or their soul - you're hurting people. It's torture, and in most of our societies that's been called wrong. Immoral. Illegal. Punishments are handed out to those who would commit these acts."

 _So, you are attempting to punish us._ The Dementor wasn't asking a question. Y _ou allowed us to before. You aided us in this "torture." You gave us a constant supply of emotion - though you did refuse to let us have the souls. We have faced punishment for that before._

"Humanity...isn't a single entity," Annabelle explained, patient and calm as she could be given the situation. It was cold. Wet. And the Dementor's presence, even when they were actively suppressing and restraining themselves...Annabelle could already feel herself weakening. Magically, and even physically. She shifted in her seat a little, tried to nonchalantly slap some life into her flesh and blood hand again. "And humanity doesn't just stay the same all the time. Humans change, individuals change, they improve. They...become better than they were. And _better than we were_ , when it comes to the situation here, is that we're not going to allow people to keep being imprisoned here and acting as living emotion batteries for your species."

"Because I know about your species," Annabelle carried on, raising her volume a little. Putting strength into it. "and I know that while you _are_ amortal - can't die of old age, can't die of starvation or dehydration, can't even be destroyed by any known magical or nonmagical means - I know you can be contained and locked away physically, as is happening right now, and has happened before. That's only one of two things you fear in this world. One: being imprisoned for eternity. And two: being deprived of any emotional sustenance, the energy of the soul. Because while you can't starve to death, if you don't have that you _do_ go into a dormant state. You just...drift around, aimless, unable to really move, or even speak. Of course, achieving this with you is nearly impossible, because as long as there's a single person or even an animal within a radius of twenty to thirty meters of you, you can leech off them and get back to being active again."

"Doesn't matter if it's a dog, a cat, a fox, owl, crow, mouse, and even some insect or arachnid species - doesn't matter. If they're in your vicinity, you'll be back in action again."

 _Your knowledge of us is correct. Are you telling us this knowledge to threaten us?_

"Me? No." Annabelle sat back in her chair. Tapped her fingers against her knees. "I just want us to have an honest discussion here about a few different topics on my mind today."

 _We have limited reserves of energy, since your Ministry broke the deal and removed our food supply. Many of us have already started to go dormant._

"I realize that, and I know I'm probably asking a lot, to ask you to use some of that talking with me here. But if you can manage it, it might be worth it for your people. Or...maybe at least some individuals, or small groups. I'm not sure yet."

 _If you are here to make another deal with us, do not waste_ your _energy, human: we will not abide by any terms you could set for us. It is evident to us now that humans cannot be trusted to maintain an agreement._

"Some humans, yes," Annabelle agreed. "Just like some Dementors over the years haven't stuck to the terms of the old agreement. But I'm not talking about my species and yours, in general. I'm just talking about you and me - right here, right now, today. That's all. I'm just Annabelle Potter, and you're just...sorry, do you have a name?"

 _On our own? No. But, a certain sub-collection of our kind has adopted the concept from your human societies, and they have assigned us with a "name."_

"Why?"

 _They feel...curiosity. Some of us have begun...feeling, in these past weeks. It is always the ones known to have consumed the highest number of souls. They themselves have started to self-generate emotions. We will show you._

"What happens to these emotional Dementors? Do they try to feed off themselves in some kind of endless feedback loop, or-"

 _We will show you. Come._

Annabelle followed the Dementor further inland. To the old fortress, massive and standing tall above all else. They entered it, began navigating the depths, the cold, stone, dark corridors.

Down several flights of stairs, they emerged out into a large, empty chamber.

Too many Dementors to count were all crowding around something in the center of the room.

Annabelle could hear their rattling breaths, and she could heard...something else. It sounded like a high-pitched whine or whistle. Intense, but low in volume. Almost barely heard.

The Dementors parted, and Annabelle was able to see past them all to the middle of the room. She saw a Dementor, in appearance like any other - but not in behavior. Not in action. The central Dementor was down on the floor, robes pooled around them. Scabby, dead, open palms slapped at stone in a chaotic, shaky sort of rhythm. Their hooded head was bowed low. For the first time in the entire history of their species' existence, a Dementor was experiencing _pain._

Annabelle lifted her wand in a flash, and she screamed out to the world: " _Expecto Patronum!"_

Her silver stag exploded into existence, waves of energy casting off it, slamming into the Dementors and pinning them against the walls.

Annabelle stalked forward, right up to the downed Dementor. She dropped to her knees in front of them, reached out and grabbed their robed shoulder - it was freezing, and skeletal under her grasp. Under those robes. "Are you...all right?"

 _A human? Here again? Is the Ministry willing to renegotiate?_

"Yes. But I'm not here to negotiate terms - not yet, anyway. I just want to talk with you all." Annabelle stood, looked around the chamber. "I _really, really want to talk to you all_." She drew breath. Let it go. Drew breath. Let it go. Her wand ceased trembling against her palm. "I understand what's happened here - or, at least, I have some kind of theory: Evolution."

 _What is evolution?_

"Evolution is...how an organism, a person, an animal - a Dementor - changes and adapts in order to ensure the survival and prosperity of their own species. It usually occurs over the course of thousands of years, but with the aid of magic it can be much faster. And you...you seem like you've started evolving in response to your environmental change in a matter of months. Your greatest soul-holders started to create their own emotions, either because they've started gaining souls of their own, or they're using the souls they've consumed to do it. Either way, that's happening, and the rest of you...you've evolved into cannibalism. Feeding off of your own people's newfound emotional capacity."

 _We like evolution._

"Yeah, it's pretty great. Most of the time. But yours, this...? You can't do this. Evolve out of it again. Resist it."

 _Why?_

"Because I came here to make an offer for you all: if you want to be let off this island ever again, you need to change. Change...as a society, a people. Those sub-collections, with the names? They have the right idea. All of you, or most of you, have to do that too. You need to make rules, and laws, and set limits. And enforce imprisonment and punishments against the ones who break them. You need to create an actual society for yourselves, and you need to start communicating with everyone. Making more deals, trading, offering and receiving services - gaining curiosities and enjoyable activities that don't involve harming anyone else. You need to do this...or you're never leaving this island. And I'm sure you all know just how long an eternity can last. You'll be here for that eternity. Even if you retain and resort to this cannibalism, you'll never leave this island again. Even if you breed with one another to your heart's content, at some point...you'll fill this place to capacity, and then you'll just...well, not a picture I want to paint. You'll be packed like sardines in a can, I guess. Unable to even move at that point. Pressed against each other."

 _Your reasoning is valid to us. We will consider the creation of a society, in order to continue the survival and prosperity of our species freely in this world._

Annabelle smiled. "Glad to hear it."

Another voice spoke then, deep and damn-near a growl in Annabelle's head. Grating inside her skull like a serrated blade.

 _Whether or not any of us creates a "society" to mimic after all the rest of these lower creatures in this world, it will change nothing for me: I feed when and where I want, and on whatever creatures I feel like._

 _Your continuing that line of old reasoning will see you to an eternity in a box,_ spoke another Dementor. _If we can change our very nature, why can we not change our chosen behaviors? We just need to choose something else. We lose nothing in doing so - we cannot age or starve or be destroyed - and yet we would gain much, it seems. I dislike being trapped here, and I would not like to be here for much longer. If I have to change my behavior to be free, I will do my best to do so._

Annabelle seized the arm of the Dementor at her feet, pulled the lanky entity to their...feet, surprisingly. She couldn't see any feet, or legs, but...they must have been standing on _something_ , because they sure as hell weren't _hovering_. That was some sad irony, she thought. Dementors affecting other Dementors to the point where they couldn't use their magical abilities, just like they did to mages.

"Uh, Dementor who I've been talking to exclusively - my tour guide - sorry, I didn't get your name, can't identify you! Where are you? I'd like your help in getting this emotional type out of here."

 _Pamel,_ came that recognizable, high voice, as a single Dementor raised an arm. _Your guardian prevents our approach._

"Yeah, I know: it also prevents _theirs_ ," Annabelle responded, gesturing around herself. "I'll let it go for a minute, but only so we can get this hurt one out of here, okay?"

 _We agree with your plan - but we do not understand why this cannibalism should be stopped._

"Because you're hurting someone else to benefit yourselves," Annabelle answered, flicking her wand and starting off for the corridor; her Patronus dimmed, faded, and retreated to the far side of the room. But didn't disappear completely. "In any society, cannibalism isn't...acceptable. You'll need to make that one of your first laws, to protect your emotional types. That's a big thing in any society - empathy, sympathy, taking care of your own, and not doing to other people what you wouldn't want done to yourself...like being the main course at a cannibal feast."

 _We will take this under advisement._ Pamel hovered over to Annabelle very quickly. They bent low and seized on the injured one's arms. Lifted them up into the air effortlessly. They hovered along ahead of Annabelle, taking the lead down the corridor. Annabelle's Patronus trotted along behind them, emitting a powerful aura to prevent any sneak attacks on them.

Of course, that didn't prevent anyone from blocking their path ahead - which, happened in the next few minutes.

They were just emerging out of the fortress and onto the island proper, when they found themselves surrounded by several dozen Dementors.

These Dementors...didn't seem to care about who Annabelle was, about the situation, or anything else. They flat out _ambushed her_ , rushing her and seizing onto every inch of her body and squeezing her arms and legs so hard she felt like her bones would snap in two! Two hands found their way to her throat, while four others held her head straight, as several others took to trying to dig their fingers into her eyes, nose, mouth and ears!

Every single one of these hostile Dementors were breathing around her, draining her as a singular, giant force.

Annabelle thrashed, kicked and punched, elbowed and kneed, and even tried _biting_. She clenched her metal fist and wrenched that limb free with superior strength, brought it crashing around and caved in the skull of a Dementor through their hood - they didn't pause in the slightest on taking this damage. She reached over to her other side and ripped a Dementor's wrist off her arm. She opened her palms and exerted her magic outward while she still could, knowing she'd only have enough strength for one or two attacks. Her first move was to induce massive tendrils of plantlife to emerge out of the ground, spurring on little leaves and thickets into great tentacles to aid her. These tentacles whipped and surged, scattering Dementors and batting them away from her, even wrapping around their bodies and forcibly lifting them away. Others simply impaled Dementors through their bodies and pulled them far away.

With her surroundings cleared up a great deal, Annabelle exerted her magic a second time; the dead hands holding her legs were forcibly detached, as great pillars of rock shot up to carry the Dementors high.

Freed now, Annabelle took up a hard sprint for the edge of the island. She'd put some considerable distance between herself and the Dementors when she turned back to survey the situation. Many of them were starting to get free of the plants, starting to come back at her. And Pamel and the injured one were-

Pamel was being restrained by others, and the injured one was being dragged back inside the fortress.

" _Expecto Patronum!_ " Annabelle yelled again, summoning her Patronus once more. Bright and powerful it appeared for her. " _Go, save Pamel and get the hurt one free!_ " she instructed it quickly. The giant stag didn't even give her a bow or a nod - just charged, leaping across the ground without disturbing it, and at unbelievable speeds. Her Patronus tossed its great horns and sent the Dementors holding Pamel flying. Pamel themself shrank down to the ground at being right next to such a powerful force of positivity, visibly and viscerally weakening in its presence.

 _Annabelle...!_ Pamel cried out in her mind, sounding _afraid_? _Get the guardian away from me - I cannot...I cannot- please?_

Please?

Annabelle rushed forward, even as several more Dementors came shooting forward to intercept her. She waved her wand and sent one flying back across the ocean as if they'd been struck by a speeding train - near enough; she'd sent a conjured up, stone wall toward them. She created a mobile, domed barrier of translucent rock around herself that the others slammed into, scratched at. Annabelle waved her wand again, and massive stone pillars shot up from the ground and carried the Dementors skyward; and then, at the apex of their ascension, the tops of the pillars burst and became stone domes around the Dementors.

Annabelle reached Pamel's side, noting how they were already starting to float up again - her Patronus had taken off into the fortress, after the injured Dementor. "You're okay, you're okay - I'm sorry! I'm so sorry."

 _Why did we say that to you? Why is there this...in our core...it burns...?_ _Are we to be an emotional one, too?_

"Maybe," Annabelle said shortly, eyeing the fortress. "Worry about it later, all right? We get in there, we get the cannibalized one back, we bring them back here, we make a huge barrier to keep the aggressive types away. Plan?"

 _That is an acceptable plan - we will assist you in carrying it out. Your Ministry might not keep to its promises, but you will. We understand this._

* * *

 **8:22 PM**

Behind a massive stone wall, a witch and a Dementor conversed.

"If I were to take you off this island, so you can be safe somewhere away from the others who assaulted you...would you agree to the terms I'm going to outline for you?"

 _What would your terms be?_

"You'd need to stay in one place, a building, a facility. And I'd bring you animals to feed off of. But, you need to get a real head start on the whole laws, rules, and morality thing, okay? The cornerstones of a society. You need to start that, lead by example for the others who want that too. If I outline some rules for you, some codes of ethics, some lists of morals, will you agree to stick to them at all times, from here on out?"

 _Yes. As I remember another saying back in Azkaban: it costs us nothing to create a society, and adhere to the laws and rules inherent with it - and we will gain so much from it in return._

"Okay. Good. I'm...I'm going to trust you on that. And as long as you don't break your promise, I won't break mine."

 _We have an agreement. Between...you and I. Pamel and Annabelle. One and one._

"Alright. Let's go."

* * *

"Annabelle, kid, I need you to listen to me here: this is a _safehouse_ , not a motel. You _cannot_ keep bringing people in and out like this. We allowed Daphne because you assured us she was never going to leave, she wasn't going to compromise your location! We allowed Queen Nyllia because she had already just _showed up_ in our backyard one night and we couldn't do anything about it, and she was coming from a place of ignorance. But now - _now, Annabelle_ \- here are these...nazguls here, and I need you to tell me: are they going to stay inside 24/7 too?"

"I can make more space," Annabelle said calmly. "I can make an entire stadium's worth of space if you want me to. Hell, I could make a small city's worth of open field for you if you let me, and literally contain it all inside a box."

James sighed, slapped a hand to his forehead. "That isn't the issue I'm having here, kid: it's _the gaping security holes that you keep multiplying around us by the day! Our job is to protect you and your friends here, but you're making it harder and harder to keep on doing that! Sorry, kid, but I'm putting my foot down here on this one: get them out. Tell them they can't stay, tell them to forget about where we even are - you didn't tell them, did you? You just teleported here?_ "

Annabelle looked to Pamel. "Sorry, I made a mistake bringing you here. We didn't get permission to have you here. But I can take you somewhere else, as long as you still hold to the agreement."

 _I will still abide by our deal, no matter where I am._

"Okay. Sorry - take my hand again." She looked at James. "I'm sorry. But I'm pardoned now - why can't I do this?"

"It's not official - it was just something talked about over a phone call," James said, like he was talking to a toddler. "Annabelle, kid, if and when your magic government makes an official announcement about it, when it gets legally declared, and then our president gets the word over here about it, then yeah, you'll be free to leave, or free to bring to us anybody who might need protection - but you _cannot_ keep just bringing people in at the same time as we're meant to be focusing on just _you_."

"Fine. I get it. Sorry." Annabelle took Pamel's arm, secured her grip on the other - no name, but hurt.

"Kid, I _am_ sorry - I live my life to help people too - but I can't help them today. Not here. It's a matter of security-"

" _Fucking security?!_ " Annabelle yelled, balling her metal fist. "You want to talk about fucking security problems?! I can go outside right now, right fucking now, and find upwards of a dozen goddamn spiders with webs set up around the house, or within five feet of it! The _hell_ your problem is about security!"

"You _said_ that it was ' _like a one in a billion chance any of them ever learns to even read_ ,'" James grated at her.

"They could still show someone where to go, they could still-"

"Okay, kid, _enough!_ Go. Just go, all right? Get those things-"

" _People!_ " Annabelle hissed, stalking forward and shoving her face in his. " _They are_ people! _Don't you fucking_ dare _finish that sentence - and goddamn apologize for it, right now!_ "

"Back. Up. Kid," James growled at her, not blinking, not moving. "Back off. Neither of us here wants to do anything we'll regret."

"Apologize to Pamel, and I will back off."

"No, you'll back off because I'm fucking telling you to, kid - _step back and simmer down._ "

" _Make me,_ " Annabelle scoffed.

"Not unless you make me make you," James retorted. "Get a handle on your temper, kid. You'll get into a hell of a lot of trouble if you continue on through life with it."

" _Fucking make me!_ " Annabelle yelled, bringing her metal arm up swinging-

James moved, something slammed into her ankles, her arm was twisting painfully, and then she found herself somehow flat on her face on the carpet of the living room. James' weight was pressing down on her. Her arm was pulled up _very_ painfully behind her own back.

"Get yourself under control!" he snarled into her ear, as she tried to twist and bring her enhanced arm about - but she couldn't reach him with it. "Get rid of it, Annabelle. Let it go. You already know you should, we've already gone over this together. Your therapist already has done it."

" _Fuck you, I'll fucking-!_ " Annabelle's words were cut short as her arm was shoved higher up her back. She could only scream.

"What the hell do you think your kids are going to think about you? How are they going to be _treated by you_ , if you continue on like this? Every time you get pissy, you hit it, you break it. So are you going to hit your kids, Annabelle? You going to get pissed off at them when they're older and throw them into a wall, huh?"

" _Let me fucking go, let me up, let me the hell up right now, or I'm going to fucking break your-_ "

James shoved her arm up even _further_ ; she screamed again. " _I'm_ going to break _your_ arm if you don't _let it fucking go!_ You don't have a goddamn excuse, kid, you know you can't do this, you know not to get this way! So why do you do it? Why are you being like this, right now? Why aren't you stopping it, stopping yourself? Why aren't you using those centering techniques your therapist taught you? Where's all that gone?"

" _I don't fucking know!_ " Annabelle screamed. She lifted her head up and slammed it back down into the floor. Again. And again. And again. " _I don't know, I don't know, just let me go, just let me go please, please I can't- please- let me up! PLEASE!_ "

Her arm was free; the weight disappeared from her back.

Annabelle jumped to her feet and threw herself across the room, slamming into the front door. She tore it open, clear off its hinges with her metal arm, and staggered out into the grassy field. Sobbing and gasping for breath, she fell to her hands and knees. She sucked in cool air, breathed in flowery scents and grass-

The ground shook under her violently. Thundering footsteps grew closer, very quickly. [Annabelle, are you okay? I heard screaming, and you're crying - I was going to break through the wall to get to you if I had to.]

Annabelle trembled, lay her forehead in the grass.

[Annabelle? What's wrong?]

She sniffled.

A long, thin, wet tongue stretched out, and dragged itself across her whole face.

[Okay, okay!] Annabelle half laughed, half cried, quickly sitting upright. She sat back in the grass, braced herself on metal arm, and looked Norberta full on in her slitted cat eyes. [I needed...air. Open space. I...I lost it, inside. I got angry, and I got my ass kicked by someone who doesn't even have magic - and he had some real good points I need to think about.]

Norberta lumbered closer, settled down parallel to Annabelle. She curled her tail around Annabelle to pull her against her flank. Her neck came around, and she blinked at her in sharp concern. [You _have_ been extra moody these past few weeks. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were the one who's been laying eggs - not me, or not Anju.]

[It's not pregnancy craziness - I intend on never doing that in my life ever,] Annabelle said firmly. She leaned back against Norberta's scaly flank, shut her eyes. The feel of Norberta's great ribs expanding, contracting behind her, along with her thundering dragon heartbeat...it was so comforting. [It's- I guess stress? I thought I'd figured that out with Anju, I thought I was getting better...and today I just- I did a good thing, and the other day I did a good thing, and I...I just got a pardon, and I...god, why am I still so screwy?! Norberta, I feel like a kid again! Like when I first came to Hogwarts, those first few years, where I was so...extreme, and panicky, and- I feel like that again. That fragile, temperamental little girl again. And I hate it, I hate this! I'm not that girl anymore, I'm not! I- I'm so much better, I'm so good, I'm strong, and I control myself,and I know what I want, and I know- I _know!_ God dammit, James was right: where the hell did all that go lately?! Why am I that girl again?]

[You're going through a lot of changes in your life lately - most of them brought on by yourself, against yourself,] Norberta mused in gentle tones. Her tail flicked, tightened a little bit more across Annabelle's stomach. [The whole world is changing, and that even scares me.]

[Everything scares you, you lazy scaredy cat.]

[True. But I mean being a mother, and a _partner_ to Emerich, for me. I've never done that before, and it's scary to think about. Even scarier to think about actually going through with my goal of creating a legitimate dragon nation someday.]

[I'm scared of being a parent, too,] Annabelle sighed. [I'm scared of being a partner to Anju. And I'm scared of...myself. But I know that, I know it, so that doesn't help me figure out why I'm becoming a wreck again.]

[When was the last time you saw your therapist, again?] Norberta inquired. [Couldn't she help you get back on track with yourself?]

[Maybe. I don't know.]

[We're all dealing with so much right now. You can afford to go a little crazy - I think it's all driving me nuts too.]

[You've always been nuts.]

[ _Oh thanks, mom._ ]

Silence.

Annabelle set her hand on Noberta's tail, started absently stroking it. [I don't know what to do to fix this. I don't know how to stop this- this falling apart thing I have going on here. I don't like it, nobody around me likes it. I want to make it stop.]

[You've been doing a lot lately, nonstop, all the time,] Norberta spoke softly. [Annabelle...could I just ask you to please take a vacation? Just isolate yourself, don't think about anything or anyone else. Just be alone - or with me, at least - and do fun stuff. Play games, watch movies, eat bad human food that smells horrible and tastes even more horrible? You've always been a workaholic, but these past few months since graduation you've been pushing it way too far. That's not healthy by itself, I don't think. What I think, Annabelle, _mother_ , is that you've finally just burnt yourself out. And I should have said something way sooner. You need to recharge, relax. Please?]

[Fine,] Annabelle agreed, slumping down in the grass. [But - I want to do one thing first! I just need to go see Maria. I need to check on her, see if she's had any...breakthroughs, I guess, with herself. Daphne asked me to keep tabs on her - wanted to know if her friend was getting better.]

[All right. Just this one visit, then you're staying with me for a few weeks! We could go to a beach? Or what about one of those movie theater parking lot places? I can go to those now! Oh, yes, let's do that a few times!]

[I thought this vacation was for me,] Annabelle giggled, slapping Norberta's tail lightly.

[Me having fun will help you have fun,] Norberta said quickly. [Fun is contagious.]

[Point,] Annabelle conceded. She shoved Norberta's tail off herself and got to her feet. She took Norberta's large face in her hands and kissed her on the nose. [Off to St. Jones, then. I'll be back...in a few hours. Maria might not want me there, but for Daphne's sake, I need to try to stick around and talk to her.]

[Don't forget to take the Dementors away!]

[Oh, shit, sorry!] Annabelle apparated back inside the safehouse, half expecting to find people inside rendered soulless. But everyone was fine.

Pamel and the hurt one were simply hovering where she'd left them.

Annabelle seized their arms, and immediately disapparated with them.

They reappeared in the mountains that Norberta and Emerich called home - or rather, where the cave was that they called home.

"Okay, stay here, enjoy your lives - start thinking about making a society, all right? Brainstorm for me until I can get back to you on it. And if you haven't hurt anybody in that time, I won't have to throw you in the bottom of the ocean and forget all about you."

 _Threats are not necessary. We agreed - and unlike humans, we keep our agreements._

Annabelle stared. "Did you just hold a grudge?"

 _Yes._

"Right. Sorry. Bye. I'll be back in a few days - or weeks. I don't know." Shaking her head, Annabelle apparated again.

* * *

 _ **8:37 PM - St. Jones Hospital, Limeswell City**_

Annabelle stepped into the private hospital room. The barrier raised behind her.

"Daphne says hi," she greeted Maria, who was laying on the lengthy bed in magical chains and binding cuffs.

"Is that all you came to tell me?" asked Maria, narrowing her pure black eyes in contempt.

Annabelle approached the bed, sat down in a chair. "No," she answered, smiling. "I was wondering how you were doing. You've been here a few weeks now, you've been talking with that psychologist-"

"You were wondering if I've decided to give up Ellesmere yet? Give up on my path to perfection? The revolving door of cops and Aurors keep wondering the same thing," she snorted.

"No. I was wondering about your family. Have they been contacted yet? Do they know their lost little girl is alive? That she's here? Have they come in to see you yet? Talk to you?"

A flicker. Shock. Pain. Horror. Rage. Spite... "No! They haven't. Not that it matters to me - I left them behind a long time ago. They couldn't even start to understand what I am now, and what I will be later. They're stupid, useless, they're nothing."

"Uh-huh. I bet they still love you. Miss you. Probably think about you every single day that passes. Wonder about you. If they'll ever get to see you smile, hear you laugh, tell you how much they love you. Hold you. Kiss you. And never let you go again."

" _They did let me go,_ " Maria snarled, her voice breaking. " _They never came for me, they never even noticed I was gone, they never-_ " She stopped. Went still on the bed. Her face went blank. Her eyes dimmed. "They're nothing to me."

"Maybe now, but they weren't before. They used to be everything to you. Daphne tells me that you told _her_ that you had great parents. You said you had the best, actually, if I remember right."

"I have a more enlightened view of what _the best_ actually is in this world," Maria retorted. "And it isn't them."

"Yeah, you're lying to yourself there. But it's fine - just, eventually, you'll have to stop, you know."

"Go to hell."

"Some days I feel like I'm already there."

"I feel like I am right now, with you around," Maria retorted. She froze. Shook her head and sighed. "Just shut up and sit there if you're not going to leave me alone." She sank back down into the bed and closed her eyes.

"All right," Annabelle agreed, smiling to herself. Wasn't this something of a victory? Some tiny bit of progress? She hoped so.

After some ten minutes, Annabelle decided to let her eyes rest too. She leaned back in her chair, stretched out her legs.

Lost herself in thought.

Eventually, somehow, she actually fell asleep there.

When she woke from the nap, she did it slowly. She kept her eyes shut still - resting was nice. Then she realized... There was a smell in her nose - extremely powerful, nauseating? What-

She opened her eyes and straightened in her chair - and then she started screaming.

 _Body parts._ There was a _pile of body parts_ in the middle of the hospital room. Blood everywhere, muscles and guts strewn out of the ends...

Arms. Legs. Torso. Head. Piled on top of each other. The heads were on top of the pile, carefully placed as opposed to the haphazardness of the other parts, staring straight ahead - at Maria's bed. There were five of them: two looked like adults, two others looked like- _like kids_ , and the smallest one was the one that held the open-mouthed, screaming face of an infant.

On the wall was a message, written in blood: _E 5th Avenue N, Number Eight - they replaced you. Just like I told you they did. And now I've kept my promise, honey, although I'm disappointed that I had to with you. You were always my favorite. Now I'll make you another one to keep: If you really want out, you need to do the same thing for me that your parents did, so that, just like them, I can make up for the loss of all those years I wasted on you. 10:30 PM, Brinsburg Park. Bring me a new girl - you know my specifications - and let's hope she turns out better than you did. If you don't show there tonight, I'm going to be_ _ **very**_ _upset with you._

Maria woke up, too, from all Annabelle's screams. She looked at the pile of _body parts_ , just sort of blinked, and then she looked at the message on the far wall. She looked back at the body parts. Looked at the _severed heads_. Really _looked at them_ ; Her eyes...glistened with recognition. Her lips trembled. "D-daddy? Mo-mommy?"

Annabelle, in all her post-scream hyperventilating, looked at the clock in the room: **8:58 PM.**

* * *

 **9:06 PM - Lisa's Apartment, London**

Annabelle appeared in the middle of the small living room, along with Maria.

Lisa entered the room just then, in an act of supreme timing. She didn't look surprised at all. "What are you doing here, and what is _she_ doing here?"

"Still have a tracking charm on me?" Annabelle greeted, frowning.

"I put a new one on you before you left the diner, after I watched you take off the first one," Lisa answered, flushing.

"Whatever," Annabelle muttered. "Lisa, I need your help with something - probably illegal, probably dangerous, and probably-"

Lisa raised a hand. Her scarred, small face scrunched up. "Save it. Just tell me what you need from me. You look pressed for time."

"Yeah. We uh- we have about an hour and a half until we need to be somewhere to meet Ellesmere. I was visiting Maria here at the hospital, and she dozed off and I dozed off, and when we woke up again it was to...her family, in front of us. In...pieces. There was a message on the wall, in blood. It said to bring a girl to a park, to replace Maria. Ellesmere's condition for...letting Maria go free. She's pissed."

"What do you need from me?" Lisa repeated impatiently.

"In your line of work," Annabelle began with utmost bluntness - now wasn't the time for anything else. "you've met people who don't really do things the same way you do, or for the same people."

"Such as the government."

"Yeah. Some other bounty hunters, some mercenaries, they work for crime lords, crime organizations. They do it for money, or for the thrill. Can you get me into contact with one of them? I need to hire one real quick."

"What are you looking for in your scumbag?" Lisa questioned.

"They need to be able to handle a sniper rifle," said Annabelle. "So, a half blood or a muggle born. Someone with experience with it."

"I can think of two people - one of them was ex military, and the other just loves killing mages with quote unquote _inferior_ muggle contraptions to prove that they can."

"Okay. Get in contact with both of them, I don't care which one ends up getting hired. Just make sure they can follow a plan."

"Fine. You still have that look on your face - what else?"

"Polyjuice, and the hair of a random teenage girl."

Lisa's nose scrunched. "Any other context, Annabelle, and I'd think you were into some sick shit."

"I'm not my aunt," Annabelle snapped, unable to help herself.

"I know." Lisa gave a nod, then disapparated.

Silence.

Maria sat down on Lisa's sofa, her long arms draped across her legs. Her hands were together in her lap. She didn't say a word, didn't look anywhere - just straight ahead.

Annabelle walked over to her, sat down with her. "Maria, for the plan to work...you have to work with it too. Work with me. Ellesmere-"

" _I'm going to kill her,_ " Maria's distorted voice came, quiet and choked.

"I'll take that as a yes."

* * *

 ** _11:28 PM - Brinsburg Park_**

" _Let me go, let me go, let me fucking go you crazy freak! Help, someone-_ "

Maria kicked Annabelle in the back and sent her sprawling flat on her face in the wet grass. Mud and grass caked her front. She turned her over and stamped on her throat, pressed down on her. Her pure black eyes gazed down at her with very real rage and disgust. "Stop it," she hissed down at her, bending low to seize her youthful, teenage face in her claws. She sliced across Annabelle's cheek, and blood spilled out. "No one can even hear or see you - no one's coming for you, no one's going to _save you_ \- _so just shut up!_ "

" _Why are you even doing this, please?! Please I just- I just want to go home, I just want to-_ "

"Maria." A figure materialized in the middle of the park, stood not ten feet from them. This figure...had no real figure. They wore bulky robes, a heavy and billowing cloak overtop. They had a loose hood pulled up, and a mask beneath it. They were faceless, formless. Even the voice was altered, distorted and deep - nearly demonic. "I'm pleased to see you've listened to me one last time." The mask tilted, the eyes behind it stared at Annabelle. "Stand the girl up - bring her to me. I need to make sure she's even a suitable candidate."

" _I brought her,_ " Maria said, insistent and quiet as she straightened, stepped off Annabelle. " _Ellesmere- I -_ I listened! I made sure she was viable - I still remember how you ran those tests on me. I remember the incantations you used."

" _What's going on here? What is this! Please, let me go, I'll do anything I swear, just-_ "

Ellesmere apparated, crossed the distance. With an impatient, frustrated noise she reached down and seized Annabelle's arm and pulled her to her feet again. A wand was produced; Annabelle found herself suddenly unable to speak. Ellesmere began waving her wand in complex patterns about Annabelle, and speaking long, drawn out incantations in a language Annabelle didn't recognize. A gloved hand ran up Annabelle's arm, across her chest, up along her neck to touch her face. A tendril of green magical energy was left in the wake of Ellesmere's roaming hand, a perplexing but harmless trail. This treatment continued on for several long minutes, until Ellesmere lowered her wand and stepped away.

"Did I do good?" Maria asked.

"She's adequately primed for treatment," spoke Ellesmere, pleasure in her distorted voice. "Not as much as I would have liked, but I'll make do. Goodbye, honey - enjoy the rest of your life. I keep my promises." She took hold of Annabelle's arm again, tightened her grip, pulled her roughly a few steps away from Maria-

The side of Ellesmere's head blew out in a spray of matter and blood. She collapsed on the ground. Following this, a great _boom_ was heard in the distance.

Ellesmere's wand hand spasmed. Drifted over the grass toward her head...

Annabelle stomped on her wrist and kicked the wand out of her hand.

Lisa materialized beneath a nearby tree. She leaned against it, her arms crossed. Just watching.

A full thirty seconds passed, with Ellesmere's hand searching out blindly beside her for the wand beyond her reach. Little noises, puffs and gasps and half-started words came out of her mouth. Annabelle watched her for these long, long seconds, and she felt...she wanted to look away - cover her ears - puke and laugh all at the same time. But she never did a thing. She just watched. Stood there, silent, and watched. In this silent time, her polyjuice wore off, and she regained her true physicality, features, and height (though the increase wasn't much). It wasn't until the hand went still, and those little sounds stopped coming from Ellesmere's lips, that Annabelle moved again.

She crouched down and pushed the hood back, pulled the mask off. She stared into the wide, blue eyes unmoving. She took out her wand and vanished away Ellesmere's cloak and robes-

And found a perfectly smooth, utterly unmarred body beneath it all. A body with a stretched, oversized belly.

Annabelle shot to her feet and whirled toward Maria. "Tell me this is her."

Maria stared, wide eyed and in utter confusion. "It's not her! But- but she could be using polyjuice, or- or- or transfigured herself to hide her distinguishing features as a precaution, I-"

"When you last saw her, was she pregnant? I never saw that in Daphne's memories," Annabelle said, her voice shaking. "I never- I didn't-"

"N-no, she was never...this isn't...what?"

Annabelle dropped to her knees and waved her wand over the corpse. Medical diagnostic spells. The results came to her, floating the air. Swirling, glowing. She drew a shaking, quick breath, and cast a spell to reverse any charms or transfiguration effects: nothing happened. She couldn't- she didn't know how to- you couldn't apparate a pregnant person, not so late- not so late- so- not-

Annabelle disapparated. Reappeared in the middle of St. Mungo's.

"I need a fucking Healer!" she screamed at the lobby.

A robed mage with an insignia hurried over to her, wand coming out. "Annabelle Potter? Are you hurt? Can you tell me-"

Annabelle seized the Healer's arm in her unbreakable metal grip and apparated with them back to the park. She shoved them over and pointed down at the woman's corpse. " _She's been dead a minute - save the baby!_ "

The Healer didn't need any more encouragement. He immediately began waving his wand, rapidly murmuring out incantations and making precise and complex movements...

* * *

 _ **November 2, 1998 - 12:15 AM - St. Jones Hospital**_

"I am so sorry."

"So am I. Whoever she was...fuck, this is my fault. Some- innocent person is _dead and I did that to her..._ "

"My family is dead because of me. Ellesmere kept her promise. E 5th Avenue N, Number Eight." Maria whispered. "She always told me my address, she always reminded me that she knew where I used to live. Where they still did. Where she'd taken me from. She promised me, she'd go back there and kill them if I tried to escape, or if I told anyone..."

"Maria, I..."

A knock at the door.

Annabelle crossed the room and opened it, prepared for trouble with the staff's night shift. Her eyes were drawn down to a teenage girl in a wheelchair. Small, thin, and pale, with bandages wrapped around a shaven head. "Uh...hey? Maria, do you-"

"I don't know her."

"Okay, um, I think you have the wrong room here, sorry," Annabelle spoke gently to the girl. "Also, it's way past curfew, I think, so-"

The girl looked up at her, met her gaze. She smiled a light, weak sort of smile. "No, I don't."

"Sorry, sweetie, but I think you do," said Annabelle kindly, patient as she could be in her current state.

The girl wheeled herself closer to Annabelle, bumped into her legs. She reached out with weak, shaking arms and grabbed her arm. "Don't ever try to outsmart me."

"I'm not- trying to outsmart you?" Annabelle replied, shaking her head. "You really do just...have the wrong room - sorry."

"The woman you murdered in that park was named Jessica Cobert."

"I- what?" Annabelle stepped back, drew her wand. Held it at her side.

"You're not looking for Ellesmere Danton," the girl stated softly. "You don't even _know_ what you're searching for. Ellesmere has been my most prominent and longest-lasting hand, but she won't always be. Jessica Cobert was a temporary hand; I only needed her for tonight - I didn't want to lose Ellesmere, I need her back at base to care for my subjects. And this girl - sweet girl - is temporary too," she finished, bringing a trembling, weak little hand to her chest.

"You're going to let her go," Annabelle said firmly.

"Yes - I've just said that," the girl snorted. Shook her head. "What _you're_ going to do is stop chasing something you can never catch. You'll only end up getting even more of my hands killed, ignorantly believing each and every one of them to be... _the true me_." She laughed an airy, pained laugh, clutched at her chest again. "And I'm sure neither you, Maria, Daphne, and anyone in this world in law enforcement - sworn to uphold justice and truth, and all the rest - wants to run up a track record of cold-blooded murders of the innocent. Because that's all you'll ever find - my limbs. And my reach...is everywhere, and at any moment."

"No, it's not," Annabelle refuted. "You might plan ahead, you might be really damn smart, but you're still just one person. You had to _set this up_ , you had to know where we were, where we'd be, and you had to set things up beforehand. That doesn't mean we can't catch you when you show up to set your trap and start your games - or set one for you right back. We can do that without anyone getting hurt."

"Maybe," the girl conceded, with another laugh. She smiled. "I'll be interested to see if you can."

"Why Jessica Cobert?" Annabelle gritted. "She was _innocent, she was pregnant! Why- why her? Why not anyone else?! Why...a baby? Why?_ "

"That wasn't me, that was you," the girl said pointedly. "Speaking of Jessica and her baby, it's lucky he survived. The odds _were_ in his favor, with magic on your side, but...still lucky. I wonder if his luck will hold as he grows up. And I wonder if you're ever going to go to him, and tell him - when he's old enough to understand, of course - that you murdered his mother. You're all about truth, freedom, and _doing the right thing_. He _deserves to know_ , doesn't he? I'd say he does."

"You sick piece of shit," Annabelle hissed, clenching her fists at her side. "You- _you fucking psychopath. You-_ "

"Do you want to keep Daphne?"

"What?"

"I already replaced Maria two weeks ago, tonight's show was just to deliver a message - something I planned on doing at some point anyways," the girl said airily. "Would you like me to replace Daphne too? I'll let you keep her, if you say yes. A trade - I keep my promises."

"No!" Annabelle snapped, clenching her metal fist at her side. "Don't...don't take any more kids. Don't hurt them. Don't. Please...just stop..."

"Do you really think I'm just going to go, _Okay, because you asked so nicely, I'll stop!_ " The girl laughed to herself. "Why even bother asking?"

"Since you're so big on promises and deals, why don't we make one?" Annabelle said sharply, switching gears. "You promise me that you'll stop kidnapping children to torture and brainwash, and I-"

"What? What can you possibly give me in return for that? That's a tall order."

"I'll give you me," Annabelle replied, firm and quiet. "You can keep me for decades, centuries, you can use me for whatever you want, do whatever the hell you want to me...and I promise I won't try to escape, or run, or hide, or even fight back. Just...just stop it, please. I don't care. Just stop."

"If I had a different goal than the one I actually do, I might actually make that deal with you. But," the girl went on, a bit of a grin showing up on her pale face. "I'm building an army, so I can't get by with just one soldier under my command."

"Then- adults!" Annabelle blurted, reaching out to seize the girl's arm. "Stop with- at least stop with kids- start- taking adults? At least they'd have a fighting chance-"

"That's why I _don't_ take them. Even Daphne proved that point true; she was right on the upper limits of what I'm comfortable with, at eighteen."

"Please! Please, just stop, please..."

The girl startled in her chair. She blinked. She looked around herself. Spotted Annabelle. Her eyes widened in recognition. "Hi? I'm sorry, do you know...how I got here? Last I remember, I was in my room, but it's all...fuzzy?" She frowned, pointed at her bandaged skull. "Might be because of this - I was in a car accident a few days ago. Or maybe it's weeks now? I don't know anymore."

Annabelle breathed. Let her metal hand uncurl. _Goddammit._ "Yeah...yeah, sweetie, um...do you know who I am?"

"Glinda the Good Witch, from the news."

"That's me, yeah," Annabelle said, laughing softly. She dropped to her knees, took the girl's hand, smiled at her. "Would you like me to help you get better?"

"How much do I have to pay you for it? I have sixty bucks of allowance at home, but they're not letting me out for a few more-"

"No, no, sweetie, you don't have to pay me anything. I just...I love to help people, when I can. And right now I would _love_ to help you. What's your name?"

"Terra. Terra Newman."

"Okay, Terra..." Annabelle lifted her wand, smiling. "I'm going to help you, and I need you to sit still for me please. It's not going to hurt at all - but it might feel weird."

"Ok..."

* * *

 _ **November 5, 1998 - US Government Safehouse, Unknown Location**_

"...the teenager, sixteen year old Terra Newman, was found dead inside the home. She was discovered hanging from the ceiling fan by her uncle, Richard Powell, when he went upstairs to bring her down to breakfast this morning. Terra Newman was reportedly subject to a recent miracle, gifted to her by the famous witch, Annabelle Potter, who was visiting the St. Jones Hospital at the time..."

Annabelle shot up from the couch, feeling sick and shaky. She saw stars. Her breathing grew shallow and quick. She swayed on her feet, and she puked all over the living room floor. She fell to her knees, slammed her metal fist through the floorboard, sending up splinters and dust and scraps of carpet.

" _No! Noooooo! No, no, no, no! NOOOO! Fucking shit, fuck - WHY?! Goddammit, goddammit fuck this, fuck them, fucking goddamn them!_ "

"Annabelle, what's going on...?" Anju's words trailed off as she spotted the television broadcast.

" _...Terra Newman was staying at St. Jones due to a..._ "

Anju lowered herself down next to Annabelle, and wrapped her wings around her.


	11. Troubled Vacations and Holiday Woes

_**November 6, 1998 - US Safehouse**_

"Vacation starts now - thank you, see you all later, sorry for the trouble and the stressful bullshit, and good bye."

Annabelle climbed up onto Norberta's back, wrapped her arms around the base of her neck, and leaned down into her. Pressed to her; she rubbed her cheek against Norberta's scales. She smiled over at Anju, gave her a little wave. Anju responded with a wave of a wing and an encouraging look.

"Are you sure you're fine with this?" Annabelle said suddenly.

"Yes," Anju replied simply. "I told you, I can handle things on my own. You need this, so go, and don't worry about anything. Just get rid of all that stress inside you, and have fun, and come back with your head on straight."

"Alright. Just- you know, last chance to keep me around," Annabelle joked.

Anju smiled. "You'll be back. And as long as you come back to me...I'm fine with wherever you go, and with whatever you have to do for yourself, and however long you'll be away for."

"Alright." Annabelle swallowed through a tight throat. Blinked and wiped quickly at her eyes. "I just- I'm not running away here, Anju. This isn't some abandonment thing, where I'm not going to show up again for another ten years or whatever. I'm not going to be some coward, some- some deadbeat mother who runs out on her family. It'll just be a- a couple weeks. I know I've had problems, I know I haven't been the best with all this motherhood stuff, but I'm _not_ just going to leave you because of it, and I-"

"I know. Annabelle: _it's all right!_ "

"O-okay..." Annabelle tugged at a few strands of hair, ducked her head and pressed her lips to Norberta's scales.

" _Not leave - not leave me! Please!_ "

Daphne came rushing out the front door of the safe house, stumbling her way across the grass toward the gathering with wide eyes and quivering lips pale.

Annabelle sighed, slid off Norberta's backside. She quickly closed the distance to Daphne, and found herself being squeezed into a big, overwhelming hug. She let it go on for a few seconds, listening to the sniffles and whimpers from her best friend. She pushed Daphne back with her metal arm, stepped back and looked up at her _utterly devastated face_. "Daphne, hey, listen, I'm just going away for a few weeks - you'll be fine, everyone here is going to take care of you, I promise you. I just - look at me, Daphne - I just need this. I need this time for me, I need...I'm so sorry, okay? I'm sorry, but I love you, and you're always going to be my best friend, and I will come back and I won't leave you unless I have to again, but I have to go now. Just for a while. Please? Daphne?" She turned away, made to climb back atop Norberta - but her wrist was suddenly caught in a strong grip. Long fingers wrapped around her arm, nails dug into her skin like knives. Very literally so: she felt a hot slicing across her skin, and she felt a stinging, searing pain there. She looked down at her arm and found a sight of drizzling blood.

" _No, please! Please no! Please - I- with! I with - you! Come with! Don't go! Not leave me - alone...again._ "

"Okay, Daphne, I-" Annabelle screwed up her face and turned back to face Daphne. She took her hands, pulled her down so they were at eye level - a difficult feat, when one considered both Daphne's unnatural height _and_ Annabelle's unnatural _lack of_. But she managed, by gently guiding Daphne down onto her knees in the grass. "Listen, if I were to even- think about this, would you...could you promise me to...to behave? To be...quiet, and to listen to me when I tell you to do something, and to...Daphne, this is important - look at me!" She reached out and held Daphne's face in hands, met her eyes against all instinct screaming otherwise. "Daphne, do you want to go on this vacation with me and Norberta?"

" _Yes, yes! Don't leave me- again!_ "

"Okay, then...I need you to promise me this, and I need you to repeat it back to me. Can you promise me that you'll behave yourself?"

" _Promise...behave self,_ " Daphne strangled out, a look of supreme concentration on her face. She was having a particularly bad time with getting the words from brain to mouth today. " _Promise._ "

"Okay. And...can you promise me that you'll listen to me at all times?"

" _Yes. Promise listen. All time._ "

"Okay. Daphne, climb aboard Norberta then - I'm going to use a very powerful sticking charm on you to make sure you don't fall off ever. Understand?"

" _Understand!_ " Daphne cried. Beaming and laughing, she rushed right up to and tripped against Norberta's flank. She scrambled up with uneven, twisted limbs, grasping at scales and spines and doing a terrible job at hauling herself up and over bodily. "Norberta," she exclaimed, stroking and patting at her scales with overzealous firmness. "Not ride- long- t-time! Egypt trip. When...I go away..."

[And now I already know I'm going to regret carrying _you_ around again,] Norberta murmured out, tossing her head and twisting her neck around to blink at Daphne.

[I'm sorry for her,] Annabelle said quickly, clambering back on Norberta's backside and sliding herself in behind Daphne. [I'll keep her from messing with you as best I can.]

[Thank you. I know she can't really help it - I'll try not to mind her rough treatment,] Norberta answered, a dash of humor in her voice.

Annabelle healed her sliced up arm, then stowed her wand away in her pocket - right beside her extension-charmed, shrunken bag. She gave Daphne's ribs a light poke with two fingers. "Okay, so we're all ready to go?"

" _Ready! Vacation fun,_ " Daphne said enthusiastically.

[I'll show you fun, little again-child...] Norberta rose up on all four of her legs, stretched her wings wide and raised her long neck. She gazed down at the little crowd gathered in front of the safehouse. Then, she whipped her head up and around and let loose a great and powerful stream of blue flames into the sky. [Thoust ist thy day that thee all shall remember as thee day thou ort hath nearest succeeded in tameth thy dragine queen,] she began, in tones low and rumbling. [Dragon Queen to be known in future as Norberta The Wonderful by all thine across thy lands! Thy day of your greatest disappointment! Thy day of...terrible things - a plague upon thee! Yeh? Anyway...ahem: thoust dearest queen takes flight on this day, with upon thy back two women, women of untoldest beauty and courage, and a-]

[Can we just fly already?] Annabelle interrupted. [I'm not translating any of this, you know.]

[Oh all right - but you asked for it.]

[Yeah, I _did_ just ask-]

Norberta pushed off the grass with an extraordinary flap of her wings that sent them skyrocketing up into the air like a bottle cork. Ten feet, twenty, thirty- fifty- eighty-

Annabelle wrapped her arms around Daphne's waist, who was shrieking with insane laughter as they continued to rise. And rise. Higher and higher- wind rushing- numbing cold. [ _Hey! Norberta sweetie, I think we're high enough by now! We can start moving_ forward _now! Also, if I fall off and you don't catch me-_ ]

Norberta continued to ascend with great magical aid. [You can cast a hover spell on yourself, or apparate back to the ground again - you'll be fine, you baby!]

[That isn't the point! The point is that I don't want you to get into a habit of almost killing me for the fun of it just because I have safety measures!]

[Oh, all right.] Norberta slowed to an idle hover, her wings beating absently. She scanned the earth below them, turning her head this way and that. [Where are we going first? Do you want to find a nice place to set up the camp first, or go find some city and get a nice meal?]

[Meal first, I think. Let's see if Daphne can really behave herself for us before we commit to taking her anywhere else.]

[Alright. I think I remember a sizable human city...somewhere in _that_ direction.] Norberta blasted a quick stream of flames ahead and a little bit off to her left. She leaned forward and flapped her wings faster and harder, and they took up a gentle glide over the landscape.

After two hours of nothing but flying (during which Annabelle zoned out entirely, getting lost in her own worries and thoughts - about Daphne, Maria, Ellesmere-who-wasn't-Ellesmere, and so much else), Norberta again slowed - hovered in place.

[What? Are you getting tired already?] Annabelle questioned. [I didn't think you were getting that old yet - you're still, what, only eight? And how long does your kind live? Something like four hundred to six hundred years?]

Norberta rumbled a low growl of thoughtfulness. She dipped her long neck and looked around. Examined far, far below herself.

[What?] Annabelle asked again, a frown taking over her face. She chanced a careful lean to one side, staring down at the earth herself. [Do you see something? Someone we might need to-]

Suddenly, Norberta closed her wings, shut them flat against her flank. She began to drop like a boulder, twisting and tumbling wildly, head over tail, rolling and flipping left and right, random and chaotic. In all of this wild flailing, Annabelle was thrown off of her.

For the first two or three seconds of freefall, Annabelle was both screaming her head off _and_ trying very hard to focus on anything else but that she was in open air without even a parachute. The next _five seconds_ were spent slowing herself down and stabilizing herself with wandless magic.

And then came the next ten seconds, during which Annabelle found herself spontaneously replacing her screams with laughter.

Far below her, Norberta was circling in place, her long neck stretched up, her slitted eyes fixed upon Annabelle. Daphne had leaned forward, pressed herself against Norberta and wrapped long arms around the base of her neck. She wasn't in the least bit afraid of what was happening, her giggles reaching up to Annabelle.

Shaking with cold and adrenaline, dizziness overtaking her head, Annabelle reached Norberta and gently landed on her back again. She hugged herself to Daphne, grinning from ear to ear. Still.. [What the _hell_ was that all about?]

[Sometimes, when I get bored flying around on my own, I have fun like that,] Norberta responded, a deep mirth in her voice.

[I can see why! That was amazing- it was- it was- oh my gosh, I want to do that again soon! Just...warn me next time, beforehand?] Annabelle added, putting some disapproval into her tone. [What if I didn't have a sticking charm on Daphne? She couldn't have saved herself at all, not with how her mind is.]

[I'm sorry. I will - warn you next time! And I'll catch you next time with my own claws, if it would make you feel any safer about it. No wait, I'll hold Daphne in my claws, keep her close to my chest! She had fun, I'm sure she'd have _even more fun_ being on the underside!]

Annabelle spit a great glob of saliva into her hand, and then rubbed that hand all over Norberta's scales with exaggerated _messiness_. [Perfect!]

[Gross - human kisses!] Norberta shook her head, let out a huff of flames. [I hope you didn't lose your bag. That was everything you needed.]

[I didn't; I still have it,] Annabelle responded. She hesitated. Patted her pants pocket to be certain. [Yeah, I definitely still have it.]

[Good.]

[Yeah. Great.]

[I'll get us going again...]

Norberta resumed her flight. At random points along the rest of their journey, she would spontaneously break out into aerial acrobatics - barrel rolls, spirals and loops - that left both Daphne and Annabelle screaming and giggling their heads off.

* * *

After a nice time in the city - during which Daphne _did_ behave herself very well - they'd left it for the wilderness, for the nearest forest expanse, and set down there. Set up a little camp.

A little, nonmagic tent, a little magical campfire.

Annabelle lay back in her sleeping bag, and stared up at the tent's ceiling.

Daphne was curled up next to her - had a hand on her arm. She was close, pressed to her.

Annabelle let her be, even though for her...it was really uncomfortable. Because it was Daphne. And... _because it was Daphne_.

Norberta was curled up on the other side of the fire pit, totally awake and alert despite how she was resting her head on her front paws.

Annabelle lowered her gaze from the ceiling and shifted insetad to watching Norberta a while through the tent door's insect screen.

"Love you."

Annabelle looked at Daphne. Smiled a little. "I love you, too." Silence again - a moment. Then, she found herself speaking up. "Daphne, do you remember...when we first arrived at Hogwarts? You remember when we met?"

Daphne's pale lips widened, her black eyes glistened in firelight with a warmth of their own. "Yes."

"When we met, that first night, I was...quiet, and I was jumpy, and- you weren't. You...just started talking away at me, taking me by the hand and promising me that you'd help me after I told you I had no clue where to go or what to do. And the next morning, that first day, I was still a mess, I was shaking my butt off. Then you came over to me and you stopped that in me. You smiled, you didn't hug me. Just took my hand - after you asked if you could. Just a night with me, and you already knew me. I still didn't like it much, but for you, _because you weren't doing anything more_...I let you. And I liked your smile, I loved it, Daphne. Nobody in my life before then had ever looked at me the way you did. It was _kind_ , and it was _good_ , and you said my hair was pretty, and you- you weren't like anybody I'd ever known before. Except...sort of Ycu. But even then, of course, she was a spider, she was all logical and practical, and not really very warm or encouraging or anything. Sure, she learned to praise me at times, she was always a quick study and knew what I needed...but it wasn't really earnest on her part. I don't blame her for that. But anyway- my- my point is that you, Daphne, you...you were honest. You were warm. And you pushed me, when I needed that, and you gave it to me and Daphne I'm so, so..."

"Glad...met?"

"Yeah. You dragged me to therapy - literally - when I didn't want to, when I was scared or...just too upset or angry or stupid to bother. And you made me go anyway, and by the end of the day's session I'd feel so much better again, and it was cause of you. And, later, you tried to get me to go to court. To testify against my relatives. Sure, nobody really needed me to, and it'd be horribly traumatic, so everyone told me I didn't have to...and I was relieved...but you tried to get me to reconsider. And, Daphne, I should have. Looking back on it now, I should have. It would have been brave, and it probably would have helped me in the long term. To know that I'd done that, gotten through it. But I didn't, I- I stayed away, I was silent, and...I never went there. And now I wish I had. I wish I'd said the things to them I should have said, even given them a good cussing out for it all."

"Still can." Daphne hesitated. "Strong _now_. _Brave now._ _Enough to go tell_. Yell. Cuss. Hurt them."

"I...yeah. But they're in prison, and I-" Annabelle breathed. Slow, deep. In, out. In and out. She squeezed Daphne's hand. Hard. "If I d-did...could you be there for me? Come with me? Please? I- I'd want you, and I'd want Norberta somewhere nearby, too."

For a long minute, there was silence. Daphne's lips moved silently, her eyes screwed up with struggle behind. Then- " _Like old times._ "

"Yeah. Like old times again." Annabelle smiled. "If I try to run away from this one again, you drag me back, okay?"

" _Course,_ " Daphne said firmly.

* * *

 _ **November 15, 1998 - St. Yelena's Corrections Facility, Magical Britain**_

The visit was easy enough to arrange, all things considered - who they were, who Annabelle was, the nature of the prison itself.

As for the rest...

Annabelle walked through the prison's bright, clean corridors, clutching Daphne's hand the whole way through.

Breathe. Just breathe.

Don't feel, don't remember. _Don't think!_

Just breathe, and keep on breathing.

 _Ycu...you taught me to run, escape on instinct alone with nothing else involved. Until after, safe again, until then, when you could think, and feel, and remember. You taught me to act, and nothing else. And I'm still following that, Ycu. I still have all your words in my head and my soul. I do. But, today...when I feel like running...I need to not. Stupid, illogical, irrational, against all sense of self-preservation - yeah, that's true. But I'm not a spider, Ycu. I'm a human woman. And humans...are so goddamn stupid and irrational it hurts to even look at most of the time. And you knew that, so you can forgive me for this today; for ignoring everything you ever told me._

 _I'm not an exception - you knew that - and today's the best example of that. Because here I am, going to meet them...and what am I thinking? That five years in prison actually changed anything? That maybe, just maybe...I'll get a look, a word...an apology? Regret? Remorse? Sadness? Fairy tale bullshit, is what Lisa would say all these thoughts are here. But I'm having them, and I'm...I'm hoping. And I hate it, and you'd be disappointed. You'd say forget about them, because they're out of sight, out of mind. Not threats anymore. No power, no hold, nothing over me anymore. Except they do, Ycu, and you couldn't understand that. They're still in me, in my head, my soul. What they did to me, it's there. Always there. And...they changed me, they taught me, too. I hate it, I've always worked so goddamn hard to not be what they made me...to forget the lessons they taught me...but I can't. Sometimes I slip up, sometimes...and I'm always so scared of it. Scared..._

 _I'm like them, Ycu. It's buried inside me, it's something I control, hide, but...it's there. I'm like them, and I don't want to be and I hate it so much! But I am and I can't change it. It's always going to be my first thought, my first impulse: hit, break, cuss, destroy. Hate. Hurt. Abuse._

 _What do I want from them? I want them to say sorry, I want them to be different. I just want to hear it, see it - it won't actually change anything, I know that, it won't mean I'll start visiting all the time, or talking over the phone, it won't mean a damn thing. Things won't be all wonderful, if they say it, if they are. Nothing will be different between them and me - but something will be different inside me. For my soul, it'll be something I want and I'll have and I'll be able to walk away and never look back again, and_ know _that it happened. Just..for peace of mind. For- for closure. Closure I never...got in therapy, or at the trial that I never went to. Yeah, that's it: I just want closure here. Bad or good, I want to know._

Annabelle stopped outside the door to the visitor's room, glanced up at Daphne and squeezed her hand tighter than ever. _I'm strong enough to know. I'm strong, and I'm brave, and I'm_ _ **powerful!**_ _I can be scared, and maybe they can hit me, yell at me again, make me tremble and piss my underwear again...but this time I'm going to be one with the power. I'm going to be the one in control. Not them, never them - never again. I can leave any time I want, like Daphne said. Or, like Norberta said...I can obliterate them with a thought._

Annabelle let Daphne's hand go. "Go back outside and wait with Norberta," she instructed, trying to sound stern. Daphne looked down at her a moment, worry in her black eyes; she turned and wandered off back down the hallway. Annabelle breathed. In, out. She pushed open the door and stepped into the visitor's room.

And there was her aunt, sitting as primly as anything on a really nice, leather sofa of pleasing blue coloration, that contrasted with the cool creamy color of the walls.

Petunia set eyes on her, and she paled. Her hands in her lap grew closer, her fingers interlocked. She said nothing.

Annabelle stepped closer, her metal arm on clear display on account of her tank top. Her metal hand was held in a tight fist at her side. She reached her other arm across herself to grasp it in flesh hand; she closed the distance in full. Stood before her aunt, stood over her. Looked down at her, despite her own shortness of stature.

"Hello." Annabelle's voice was all throaty and dry. Here, now, actually in the flesh and in the room...she felt a whole lot smaller than even was usual for _her_. Where the hell had her resolve to be _strong and brave_ gone all of a sudden?

"H-hello, Annabelle." Quiet. Hesitant. Nothing in it? No disappointment, no anger, no malice no spite or disgust. And...

 _Annabelle? Not "girl"? Or "little bitch"? Or "worthless slut"? None of that, now? Just...Annabelle?_

Annabelle let her metal hand go, let her flesh arm swing to her side; Petunia followed the movement, then set her eyes on the metal limb itself. Silver and shiny. Magical and powerful. Annabelle seated herself on the sofa's end, putting a gap of a whole two feet between them. She shifted to one side, looked at her aunt. Swept her up and down with eyes alone. She looked the same as ever. Maybe a little paler, maybe a little thinner, but she looked the same. The same as the woman who always...

Annabelle breathed. Faster, shallower. She reached into her waistband for her wand, drew it out. Set it on her lap, held it there in flesh hand. Her aunt's eyes stayed only to Annabelle's face - no straying. No straying to the places they'd strayed so many times before; like the place where she had her wand now. A part of Annabelle thought it was kind of funny: her aunt finally had an actual _reason_ to look at that area of her body, and she wasn't doing it at all. With her wand, Annabelle could kill her, right here and right now, in a hundred different ways and as effortlessly as she was breathing the air out of her lungs. Her aunt didn't seem afraid of that possibility. A part of Annabelle _wanted her to be afraid_.

Her and her aunt, they sat together like this for a good couple minutes. Just...looking at each other.

Annabelle drew breath again, deeper, and far slower. Her shaking shoulders weren't shaking so much now. "Do you...do you- have anything you want to say to me?" A dry, shaky voice, small and and alone in the spacious room. Then, the silence again. The silence she loved. But not the one she wanted right now. Not here, not at this moment. _Please...I don't want to just sit like this for another hour...please say something, do something - yell at me, hit me again, or throw yourself at my feet and cry and beg me the way you always made me beg to you when you came into my room and I was so goddamn scared and..._

Petunia sucked in a long breath of air. Met Annabelle's eyes. "Annabelle...how you were treated, your whole life by me - you never deserved it. You were hurt, and you were scared, and you were violated, and I did that to you and I never should have. You deserved a better life, and a better home, and a better family. You never should have gone through all the horrible things that you did - because of me. That night when you called the police, that was good, and it was brave, and it was the best thing you ever could have done for yourself. You...you did the best thing you could by getting away from me, and keeping me away these past five years. You've been...so much better off, never seeing me or hearing from me all these years."

"Okay." Annabelle looked to the right of her aunt's head. "I...I wa- I want to know why. Why'd you ever- do all that to me? Why- _how could you ever do anything that you did to me? What the hell- what did you even tell yourself in your own head so you could keep on doing it? So you could go to bed every night and wake up again the next morning, and do it all over again?!_ " At the end her voice was so high and jittery that it hurt her own ears, and she hated how she sounded as a matter of course - like that little girl again! She hated it, hated it, hated it, why was she like this again, why was her chest so- why couldn't she- she was supposed to be _strong right now! She was supposed to be- in control! Of herself, of all this, of her aunt, so why wasn't she? Why was she falling apart again, in a way she hadn't in years?!_

"I hated you." Petunia didn't look away. Not once. She didn't hesitate, these words. Words about hate. But not _full of hate_. Not this time. Just...sad. "I hated everything you reminded me of. None of it was ever your fault, none of it was _ever_ deserved. But it was what it was. Every time I saw you, it was the night I learned that my sister was murdered - from a letter left on a doorstep. Every time I saw you, as you grew up, I saw my sister herself. I saw her eyes, her smile, I saw her face. And I saw her dead. And I hated you for that, and I hated you because you reminded me how much I hated _myself_. For all those times in my childhood, and after, that I spent hating _her_. I hated her, I hated the magical world, and I was petty and jealous and bitter, and I gave every inch of those feelings to her, whenever I could. And then all of that...I just put it all onto you, and then all those newer feelings of hate on top of it."

"Okay." Annabelle tightened her grip on her wand. "Makes sense."

Petunia didn't respond. She finally broke eye contact, looked into her lap.

"Six more years, and you get out of here," Annabelle spoke. "Vernon gets out in four."

"Yes."

Annabelle laughed. "How are you going to deal with that?"

"With Vernon?"

"With the world." Annabelle stood. Stalked away, turned back and flicked her wand; Petunia flinched. The sofa cleanly cut itself in half, and the separate and unoccupied half turned into a twenty foot long serpent, coiled and glistening with beautiful blue scales. "Have you been keeping up with the news? Reading the papers, watching TV? I can do this sort of thing whenever I want, and so can thousands of others out there. Freely, right in the open. Whatever we want, whenever we want. There are sapient, giant arachnids and serpents, there are harpies and dragons, elves and dwarves and goblins, centaurs and giants and mermaids, fairies and manticores and nundus and sphinxes, and there are hags and vampires and werewolves and _there is magic!_ The entire world is full of it, and now the whole world knows it, and it's _never_ going to go...go back into some dark cupboard again."

Annabelle strode over to the half-sofa, and casually began to stroke the top of the serpent's blue head. Scratched under its chin. Let it lick at her fingers. She turned to Petunia. "Can you handle that? Or are you going to be one of those people we already have in the world now, who are loud-mouthed and hateful, who call gay people fags and lesbians dykes and bar black people from using their little shops, and who _now_ go around attacking random ass banshees and kicking little hags _just because of what they are?_ You going to be a spiteful, pathetic little piece of shit about it all, or are you going to learn and grow and _fucking deal with it?!_ " She breathed. Heavy. Her heart beat like a drum. She clenched up her metal fist. "Because let me tell you, Petunia, the world doesn't need _one more person like that_ let out into it. It has too many already. It has enough."

Petunia stood, slowly. She walked over to Annabelle, a few steps and they were closer again. Petunia's hand came up, pale and shaking, and she set her palm on the serpent's scales. "I can't just tell you that I've changed."

"You could. But I want to see it," Annabelle replied. She nodded to the serpent. "This is a good gesture, a good sign - nice show. Fine. Good for you, you can touch magic now - not that you ever had a fucking issue with it when I was a kid. But, I want...in six years...I want to _see it. Really see it._ I'll give you one, _one chance_ to show it to me. Show me you've changed - about _everything_." She paused. Her mind whirled. "You do that, and _maybe_ I'll think about calling you on the phone every now and again," she started slowly, not even sure if she was lying to her aunt, or to herself, or if she was being honest. "But, ground rule for that here: I'll call _you_. You _will never_ call me. You understand me? You don't ask me, you don't beg me, you don't _demand_ anything. If I want to talk to you, if I want to hear you, I'll call you and that's fucking that. Be happy with it or you're out of my life until you die. Got it?"

"I understand, Annabelle."

Annabelle stepped forward, stepped closer. Looked up into Petunia's eyes. "We'll see." She slashed her wand out at her side and set the sofa right again, whole and just a sofa. She slipped her wand into her waistband. She stepped back, raised her metal arm - held out her silvery hand of cold power.

Petunia took it.

Annabelle held for a second. Two. Three. She was scared of herself right then that she'd just start squeezing, squeezing and squeezing until she broke her aunt's hand in half and every bone in it. But it passed, that impulse, those worries, and she let go, held her fist in her flesh hand at her waist and stepped back. Annabelle had made up her mind now. Knew what she wanted to do.

"Six years, I'll see you again," she spoke slowly. "I'll be here the day you get released, and I'll take you to see my family and my friends. Let's call it a welcome home party. A way for you to start getting all...acclimated to the way the world is now. Will still be."

"All right, Annabelle. That...sounds nice. Thank you for giving me this chance, I don't even deserve it."

"No, you don't," Annabelle agreed. "I don't care whether or not you fuck it up for yourself - it doesn't affect me, just hurts you - but I am going to tell you that _I will care_ if you treat any of my family or friends in anywhere near the same kind of way you treated me all my childhood. You even give anyone _a dirty look_ , and you're _out_. I'm never going to let that sort of thing happen again. Not even once."

"I understand."

"Great." Annabelle turned away, started for the door. Pulled it open; she paused. "Bye," she said over a shoulder. Then she walked out.

She strode through the halls, made it back into the waiting area. She passed out through the doors, out into the grass again. Into the sun. She passed beyond the anti-apparition barriers; a quick apparition and she had crossed the lush field and reached Norberta and Daphne (they were playing around together, with the former swiping at and knocking the latter over with a quick and powerful tail from various angles).

Both of them looked at her.

Annabelle threw herself at Norberta, collapsed against her side in the grass, and she started bawling.

Norberta curled up around her, held her tight with legs and tail, and brought a wing down to shield her in warmth and darkness and quiet.

Annabelle cried until she just couldn't anymore, and then she just closed her eyes, turned to one side and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

 _ **November 26, 1998 - Rynegaul Village**_

*You've taught me so much, told me about so much - places, objects, technology and magic, and even concepts and ideas, like friendship and family, love and affection, altruism, and art and storytelling in so many different mediums. Then there are the things like science, biology, math and astronomy and geology, history and war and architecture. And still, with everything you've ever described and explained to me, everything you've taught me, I still can't really understand most any of it. I can't even imagine these things. Before meeting you, I never could have - I never even knew they existed!*

While Annabelle listened to Miranwe, she leaned against the outside of the cabin and pulled her coat tighter around herself. She looked out across the village, eyes roaming at random.

*All these things you know, I want to know them too,* Miranwe went on. *I want to know them...how you know them. I want to understand, how you understand it all. I'm going to die in three years, and I know you said that not even humans with their incredible lifespans can learn and experience all of those things before they die - but I want to try. I want to learn, and experience for myself, as much of all these things as I can. Is there some way you can help me to do this?*

*Not me,* Annabelle replied, shaking her head. *But...I might know someone who could. They're very old, very knowledgeable, and very skilled with magic. If anyone could help you with...broadening your horizons...it'd be him.*

*Where is he? Can we go to him now?*

*I- yeah,* Annabelle answered. She pushed off from the cabin wall. Looked down at Miranwe on her coat sleeve. *Yeah, we can go right now, I guess.*

*Okay - thank you.*

*You're welcome.*

Annabelle focused her mind, and disapparated.

* * *

 ** _Hogwarts Castle_**

"So it's possible to do this for her?"

"Very much so," Dumbledore smiled at Annabelle from across the desk - upon which Miranwe stood - his hands folded in his lap. "Forgive me for a momentary lapse in humbleness, will you - but, being much cleverer than most as I am, and significantly more skillful, I do believe myself to be capable of fulfilling her wish where perhaps others may have no hope of doing so."

"Entirely true - and that's why I came to you," Annabelle acknowledged, laughing. "She's...already impatient about trying it, and she wanted me to ask you if we can give it a go right here and now."

"Certainly. My day has been a rather uneventful one, so I welcome any disruptions in the usual routine."

"Right."

Dumbledore stood, drawing his wand in an easy, simple motion. He pointed it at the desk, which transformed into a simple bed. "This seems a much more comfortable place for one to find themselves with an entirely new body configuration, yes?" he spoke, giving her a twinkle-eyed look.

"Yeah," Annabelle agreed, standing. She clasped her hands in front of her, and stared down at Miranwe's glossy little form on the bed. *Alright, uh, we're going to go through with it now, so...just try to stay calm, try to go slow with it, okay? It's going to be confusing, and weird, and...probably take a lot of getting used to.*

*I'll learn how to use the body,* Miranwe assured.

*I know, just...try to keep in mind that humans are delicate. We don't have exoskeletons; we're sacks of water, basically. So don't- don't poke anywhere, don't scratch anything, don't try to pick at or...or bite anything, all right? You'll hurt yourself - a lot. Maybe even fatally, depending on what you do to yourself.*

*I understand. Humans are like webbing; they need to be handled gently, and with precision.*

*Yeah. We can snap and break pretty easy, like strands of webbing.*

* * *

 ** _Rynegaul Village_**

Miranwe stood behind the cabin with Annabelle, staring out across the clearing to the forest edge. Her arms were held awkwardly at her sides. She raised a jerky, sloppy hand to pull the scarf up over her mouth and nose again.

Annabelle stood with her, arms crossed, wand idly being rolled in hand.

*This body is so vulnerable.*

*Yeah.*

*I don't like the feel of these...clothes.*

*Me neither,* Annabelle admitted. *Most clothing, I can't stand wearing. It's uncomfortable. The feeling of it against the skin, the tightness of the collars and the arm holes and the chest...I don't like it at all. But over the years I've learned what clothes I can wear and what I can't, to feel the most comfortable. Mainly it's soft stuff - soft, thin shirts, cotton underwears, no bras if I can get away with it, soft shorts or pants, like exercising kinds. Sweatpants. I love dresses and skirts, but I don't really wear them very much; they aren't really, uh, suitable for all the crazy shit I get up to in life. Dueling, hand to hand stuff, even just letting Norberta carry me around would be really difficult and stupid if I were going around in dresses or skirts.*

*So you have experience with discomforting clothing.* Miranwe looked at her. *Can you help me choose more comfortable clothes too? I want to try to wear the things you wear - all the things you just mentioned, just now.*

*Yeah, sure! Sure. We can make it a shopping day, even! You'll get to experience your first supermarket.*

*Okay. Thank you.*

*No problem.*

*I'm so small. What do your people ever want with mine?*

*I- I don't know,* Annabelle stammered. *I mean, I- I know what I wanted with...with you. I just...saw you, talked to you, connected with you. That's what we do, generally. We try to socialize with people around us, and we try to help whoever we can. It's human instinct.*

*My instinct is to avoid everything else around me, and to stay in one place as long as I can. Other living creatures are threats. Motion is threat. Sound is threat. Pain and death are results of threats.*

*Yeah...that's sort of my own personal instinct too. I've never been a very good human, I guess; I've always been fine being on my own, by myself - I prefer it, actually. I can't stand crowds, or lots of noise or sights or smells, and socializing with people just makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes I can even get into a state of total...anxiety, panic, I guess, and I have a huge meltdown over it. Emotional overload from sensation overload.*

*I don't think I'm a very good spider, then, either,* Miranwe responded, sounding thoughtful. *I kept talking to you, I've learned from you, and I've questioned you. I've stuck close to you. You: a huge, moving, loud living creature. I even met many other large creatures, and I helped you to kill other larger creatures. Everything I've done since meeting you has gone against my own kind's instincts. Even if it makes me uncomfortable, I still keep doing it.*

*Yeah. That's just- kind of what we all have to learn, I think. People like us. We have to learn to do things, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Because in the long term, it'll really benefit us.*

*Yes. But there are things I wish I'd never learned from you. Before I met you, I never would have even thought about my death. I never would have thought about...all of this, and how much I want it, and how...how much I don't want it all to go away. I don't want it to go away, Annabelle, I don't want to go away. I don't want to go! And I hate that, and I hate you for making me think about that! It's not fair, that you get to go on for centuries and I have to stop after _three more little years!_ I hate you, I wish you'd never told me anything - about anything! I wish I didn't know all these things, I wish I hadn't felt these things, I wish I hadn't...* Miranwe trembled. Her hands clenched awkwardly. *I hate you so much, Annabelle...you give me all this, you show me all this, and you know I have to lose it all in three years anyway. It's cruel, you're cruel, and I wish I didn't even know what _cruel_ meant again. I wish I'd never met you.*

*I'm sorry. Uh, hey, in the whole world and across all civilizations, there are a lot of different ways to...extend life. And there are some ways to become flat out immortal. Most of them are immoral, or illegal, because they involve hurting others for your own gain, but...but there are a couple ways that...are both not secret and don't involve hurting people. Though, most of _those methods_ still involve hurting _yourself_. Forever. If you think it's worth it, though...you could...go for it. I wouldn't tell you not to, it'd be your choice. Your life, your body. Your price to pay.*

*What ways?*

*Well, the one that immediately comes to my mind is becoming a vampire. Luckily we're friends with one - Adelyn. I could get in touch with her, ask her to visit. Talk to you about the whole thing. You could ask her questions, discuss it with her before you actually go through with it or not.*

*Thank you.*

*From what all she's told me, it's a horrible way to live.* Annabelle ran a hand over her face. Shifted on her feet. *You literally never sleep, you _can't_ sleep, you can never actually eat anything - never enjoy it, anyway - and human touch...if you're into that sort of thing...you just don't even feel it. You can never feel it. And then there's the whole burning sunlight issue, and the even worse fire that can kill a vampire, and the fact that you can't ever apparate as a vampire. And the worst of it all is...you have to live a life of misfortune. A bad luck curse. Everywhere you go, everything you do, everyone you meet...bad things happen. Pain, and misery, and deaths. All caused by you. Sure, Adelyn is one of the richest people in the world, so she can afford a constant supply of counteractive agents, like the recently developed Felix Felicis potion, probably for the next couple decades in a row...but not everyone is her. And that's why most of her long life, she's kept having these decades long periods of total isolation; she's always filled with this terror, and this remorse at the pain she causes just by being around other people.*

Annabelle looked at the ground. Wiped at her eyes. *That's why you don't see bad guys lining up to become vampires. There are two dozen fistfuls of negatives compared to the few perks of immortality, and enhanced strength and speed, and a set of killer claws. It's crippling, it's limiting, it's horrifying, and nobody would ever choose it unless they didn't fully understand how bad it was from the start. Not even Grindelwald, or Voldemort chose to live that life, so that should tell you a hell of a lot about it Miranwe...*

Miranwe's expression never changed. More a product of the fact that she didn't even know _how_ to change it than anything, but... *I'd still like to meet with Adelyn, and talk to her about it properly before making a decision.*

*Alright,* Annabelle whispered.

Suddenly the ground was shaking, and a great scaly figure was shooting toward them in the dark.

[Sevra's hatching, Sevra's hatching, Sevra's _hatching!_ ]

Something large and heavy struck Annabelle in the chest, and she suddenly found herself flat on her butt in the grass, with Norberta's great form towering over her. [What?!] she exclaimed, getting up quickly and brushing herself off. [I thought she wasn't even supposed to do that for another couple days?]

[I know - come on, come on!]

Annabelle apparated across the village; they reappeared out in front of Anju's personal cabin. She felt the biggest smile coming over her face as she watched the great egg begin to crack and wobble inside dancing flames of a bonfire.

* * *

 _ **December 21, 1998 - Rynegaul Village**_

Annabelle was standing around in the village square when Norberta came to her in a hurry. Her tail anxiously flicked about behind her, and she shuffled her great wings against her sides.

[A-Annabelle, I think something's wrong with Sevra.]

[What? What- what could be...what do you think is wrong with her?]

[She's one of the first dragon children since ancient times to be born with her full, natural sapience levels...so why isn't she acting like it? She should be talking, like we are now, shouldn't she? She should be repeating at least a word or two of what we say around her! She should be learning, watching, she should be...and she's so violent, all the time - she tried to bite your leg off! How _isn't_ there something wrong with her?!]

[Norberta: calm down, please.] Annabelle started forward and took Norberta's snout in her gloved hands, gave her nose a kiss. [Listen, if you think there's something wrong with her, then what do you want to do about it? Nobody...we're all in uncharted territory here, aren't we? Nobody...really has any knowledge about ancient dragon development milestones. Nobody could tell us about any of that - unless we found an ancient dragon ghost somewhere, but we'd have to _really_ go searching for that, and-]

[I want to see Charlie again. He took care of me in Romania in my earliest years, he's been helping reawakened dragons adjust now too. It's the Christmas holidays, he should be with his family at the Burrow right now. We can go there, you- you need to translate for me, for him, please...show him Sevra, ask him what's wrong! Something is wrong, I know it!]

[Okay. Let's go, then,] said Annabelle. [Let's- let's get Sevra, and let's go.]

Norberta nodded her large dragon head in such a human way. She wandered off through the village with great care and a silent grace, returning some five minutes later with an uppity Sevra out in front of herself. At times, Norberta would bat a wing forward, sling her tail around herself, kick out with a foreclaw, just to keep Sevra moving and focused.

When Sevra noticed Annabelle, she immediately rushed toward her, and started growling at her and tearing into her left boot with small, sharp teeth.

[Hey,] Annabelle said sharply. Sevra startled, whipped her head up to stare at her face; then she started on Annabelle's ankle. Annabelle sighed, looked to Norberta. [She's...cute-?]

[No she's not!] Norberta snapped. [She's screwed up! Don't tell me this is normal! Human babies don't act this way, do they? I've watched you and Anju, and I _know_ that your harpy children don't act this way! Don't tell me mine is behaving in any way that's- that's okay- it's not okay- it's _not okay, Annabelle!_ ]

[Okay. I'm sorry. Let's go.] Annabelle first sent Norberta on her way with a portkey, and then she apparated to join her. [All right, just try to wait out here, try to keep Sevra from...behaving badly, and I'll go see if Charlie's around.]

[Hurry,] Norberta said anxiously; her foreclaws scooped up Sevra and pulled her under her belly.

Annabelle strode up to the Burrow's front door and gave a hard knock with cold knuckles. Waited - she didn't have to for long. The door opened up for her.

"A-Annabelle?!" It was Ginny Weasley. Staring, flushing, stammering. Face as red as her hair.

 _Anyone but her..._

"Ginny," Annabelle started, trying to sound casual. "Sorry to come here like this when you're all trying to just- just be a family together, but there is an emergency situation here that I need help with. Well, Norberta needs help with. We- we need Charlie - his expertise. Is he around?"

Ginny's flushed features gave way to a frown. A bit of a pout, actually. "Yes, he's actually just-"

"Annabelle," Charlie spoke, striding up to the front door with a serious look. A _concerned_ look. "You mentioned an emergency with Norberta?"

"Yeah, it's- well, it's actually her kid - Sevra, daughter - she...Norberta's really up in arms about...she thinks something's wrong with her. I told her we don't know anything about ancient, natural dragon development rates, but she seems to think something is, uhm, _off_ about Sevra...so she asked if we could come here, get you, get your help and...yeah..." Annabelle trailed off.

Charlie gave a deep sigh. Ran a hand over his burn-scarred, cut up face. Threaded fingers through his hair. He looked out the window, eyed Norberta and Sevra in silence a moment. His face turned into a troubled frown. "Let's get out there."

"O-okay..." Annabelle stuttered out, a painful feeling squeezing her up inside. For Charlie to be this way about the visit...was something actually wrong with Sevra? Something serious?

She led the way back out the Burrow.

Charlie started right up to Norberta, gave her a smile and a nod. "It's good to see you again. I just wish it wasn't in a situation like this." His gaze lowered to Sevra, who was snarling and squirming at him, and being held back firmly by her mother the whole time. "I'm going to take a look at her and figure out what might be happening, all right? Can you just keep her like this for me?" he went on kindly. Norberta gave a single, simple nod, her eyes narrowed. Charlie squatted down in the snow, took out his wand and started waving it about in Sevra's direction. Muttering some spells Annabelle couldn't even figure out the intent of.

After a minute or two of this act - and some strange blue flashes and yellow pulses around Sevra - Charlie stood up again. He looked tenfold more concerned than he had so far. He heaved a breath, pocketed his wand, and looked up to meet Norberta's eyes. He stepped back.

[What's wrong with her?] Norberta spoke, in a soft, high tremble. Annabelle translated the question.

"Norberta...these past months, we've already had a couple dragon parents journeying back to Romania seeking out help with a problem, and we have done some examinations and a couple of tests on those who have consented to it - the same one I just did on Sevra - and they've showed us something that I'm very sorry to have to tell you: Sevra has your curse."

[How is that even possible? I don't _have_ the curse, or we wouldn't even be having this conversation! You don't make sense! Start making some sense! How does that make sense?! And even if it does, if she somehow has it, is this permanent, or is it something that she's going to...grow out of? Is she going to get better?]

Annabelle translated it all for Charlie.

Charlie shook his head. "I don't know about any of that - I'm sorry. I just couldn't say whether or not she'd keep it, or lose it later. We're only a handful of years past when your generation first had the curse wear off to begin with. There's no way to know what effect it will have on the _next_ generation. Though...as for how it happened? We've speculated that it has to do with the creation of new life itself - new souls. The creation of a soul...it's such an intense and powerfully magical event, forming a soul from nothing, that traces of the curse inside of dragons like yourself were able to...latch onto the new soul and become invigorated and revitalized during the process, and the concentration of all that magical power. And from then on, newly active, the curse stuck with the child as it left the mother. I can promise you that everyone I know is working as hard as they can to find a way to neutralize the curse in your people's children...but I can't promise you that it will ever happen. This curse was so powerful that it took one thousand years to weaken and fade from your kind naturally. I don't think a curse as powerful and enduring as that could be forcibly stripped away by anyone, in any small amount of time."

[I understand...t-thank you.]

"When the world discovers a way to either lessen the effects of the curse, or remove it entirely, I promise you'll be one of the first to know. Sevra could be...a trial run of the thing, let's call it. All right?"

[Yes...anything to...make her not...] Norberta shook her head. She sighed. [Annabelle, I want to go now. Wouldn't want stupid Sevra eating any of the Weasleys, would we?]

[Norberta, how could you-] Annabelle caught herself. She stroked Norberta's foreleg. [Okay, yeah. Yeah, we can go now.] She looked to Charlie, gave him a smile. "Thank you, for helping her and Sevra with this. You didn't have to come out here, on such short notice, just for her. Especially on holiday."

Charlie nodded. Offered a hand. "It was no trouble, trust me." He looked to Norberta. "If you ever need my help again, feel free to ask for me."

"She will - she...she does. It was nice seeing you again. Nice- seeing Ginny again, too."

"I'm sure," Charlie grinned. "See you around, Annabelle."

* * *

 _ **December 24, 1998 - Rynegaul Village**_

[I could tell her I love her a thousand times over, and she'll never understand me - not even once. It isn't even a _concept_ in her mind; there's _nothing in there! She's nothing, she'll never- she will never even recognize her own name, Annabelle! Or what a "name" even is! What do I- what do I do with her? I can't teach her, I can't talk to her, I can't...nothing I ever do or say is going to matter to her. Just...eating, and sleeping, and...pretty much just those two things! Maybe migrating, maybe having children of her own later in life, but...there's nothing behind it, there's nothing in it. What do I_ even do with her?!]

[I don't know.] Annabelle sighed. Sat down beside Norberta in the snow, stroked her flank with a gloved hand. [I have no clue, Norberta. But...well...just because she...] She stopped. How could she find the words for this? [Okay, Norberta, listen. There are human kids out there who...you know, they're not as smart, or capable of understanding stuff, or even doing things like walking or seeing or hearing. But...but that doesn't mean they're worthless, or useless, or- I mean, you know me, you know my whole autism thing, right? Can't look people in the eye without feeling pain in my head, can't wear certain clothes without feeling like my arms are bleeding, can't hang around loud noises or crowds without feeling all sick and hot and wanting to scream - I always need to have a focus, something to do and repeat and stick to it to get by. Especially in times of real stress. Like pulling out strands of hair, or tapping, or twisting rubber bands, or putting paperclips between my gums or in my ears - the feeling, the pressure, the grating, the nerve endings, even the pain I don't really feel, it's...calming. It feels good. So that's- that's me, Norberta, and...]

Annabelle patted Norberta's flank. Took a minute to regather her thoughts. [Okay, yeah, so- so that's a thing, right? But...but does that all mean I'm not worth being around? Worth caring about? Worth...loving? Don't think so. So- so you- _you, Norberta,_ you have the same sort of thing here, don't you? Sevra is...she's mentally...uh, handicapped? Maybe she'll never be like the other kids, maybe she'll never learn how to talk, maybe she won't be able to do math, maybe she won't ever understand you when you tell her just how much you love her...but she matters. She's who she is, and she's yours, and she's alive, and she does _think_ and she does _feel_ , even if it's not anywhere...on the same level as you or anybody else in this world. And that matters! You...you keep her, you talk to her, you love her anyway - because she's yours. It'll...probably hurt a lot, it'll be tough, to see her and see every other dragon kid out there _not like her_...but you have to. Because she's yours.]

[And what if I can't?]

[Then you...you make the choice as the parent to...if you really feel like you have to...you give her to someone else. Let someone adopt her. You took that concept from us, feel free to use it. But that's going to be your choice, yours and Emerich's.] Annabelle patted Norberta's side. Leaned over and gave her scales a kiss. [And if you do make that choice, then it's yours and you made it, and I'm going to support you for it, even if I wouldn't agree with it.]

[Would you agree with it...if I did?] Norberta whispered, voice quivering with fear.

[No,] Annabelle said plainly, shaking her head. [No one ever gave up on me, did they? And I didn't give up on _my_ kids, even when I wanted to, so badly. I wanted to run, I was scared, but I stuck around in the end, and now look where I am. I'm - me and Anju - we're making it work. But you're you, and I'm me, and our situations aren't at all the same. So yeah, you do what you need to, make the decision, and I will support you. I'll never say a bad word about it, or about you - promise. And I won't let anyone else, either.]

[Thank you, mother.]

Annabelle shifted in the snow. [You're welcome, uh...sweetie?]

[Anju's still trying to get you into using those terms? She's really taken a liking to human endearments...]

[Yeah. I'm...I'm trying. Everybody just...just tries.] Annabelle laughed. [We all just- we try and we- we hope it works out. Hope it was right. And if it wasn't...we...we deal with it. Maybe try to fix it, if it needs fixing, but...]

[Yes. I love you, mother. I love you so much, and I don't know where I would be or what I would be doing in this world without you. Probably nothing good. But because of you, I am good. I feel good, most of the time. I'm happy, and I love the life I have. I love our friends, I love our adventures, and I love Emerich. And...and I'll try to love Sevra, too - even with how she is.]

[I love you, too. And...Merry Christmas Eve.]

[Merry Christmas Eve,] Norberta said mournfully. Silence. A long, long moment between them. [I'm going to try, but...but still: If I'd known she was going to be like this beforehand, I would have just smashed her egg the second I popped it out.]

[That's- that's a perfectly...perfectly... _valid_ way to feel about it.]

[Could I have done that?]

[Depending on...dragon soul development rates...there could've been a time where you could have done it, yeah.]

[You don't sound like you approve, either way, mother.]

[You don't need my approval,] Annabelle shrugged. [It doesn't matter.]

[If you were me, and you knew beforehand, you wouldn't have done it. Not even then!] Norberta pressed.

[I'm not you.]

[I...I don't like feeling like you...like you're disappointed with me!]

[I'm sorry.]

Norberta sighed. [Well, she's here, so there's nothing either one of us can even do about it. We just have to deal with it.]

[Yeah.]

[Still...I wish she wasn't here. Not just for me, but for her. She's not- going to have any kind of life. She'll be alive, but she won't be aware. It isn't the same. She's just going to go through the motions, instinct and nothing else. How can I let her do that? For years and years, until she dies, and she won't even be able to understand that she...]

Annabelle closed her eyes. She reached up and tugged a strand of hair. [You can't miss what you've never had. Miranwe was just fine before she ever became...aware of things she wasn't before. She was...happy, wasn't she? That's kind of just...the best you can do. Isn't it? And the best you can do is just going to have to be good enough. For her, and for you.]

[I suppose...]

[Norberta-]

Norberta snapped her head away, stared out across the snowy landscape. [I want to stop talking about it now.]

[Okay.] Annabelle gave Norberta's side another pat. A caress. She leaned over and kissed her scales. [Okay, Norberta, that's fine.]


	12. Living In A World Like This

_**January 1, 2005 - Rynegaul Village**_

Annabelle woke gradually in her bed.

She listened to the noises from the open window. She breathed in the air, took in the scents. Stayed like this for a while, just...just like this. Just...for a while, until a soft rustling of caught her ear, and the sun was blocked out by something moving in front of her.

Annabelle opened her eyes and stared up at Anju, who had her feathery wings crossed in front of herself. There was a frown on her face.

"Annabelle, honey, I've given you as much time as I can, but now it's past time for you to wake up. Do you remember we have things to do today?"

 _Oh..._ "Yeah," Annabelle said blearily.

"Well then...please get up, and start getting ready?"

"Okay. Yeah...okay...sorry, just..."

Anju's frown deepened. She shifted her wings into feathery arms, and reached down to grab Annabelle under an armpit. She hauled her up and shook her a little. She put a hand in front of Annabelle's face; incredibly cold water rained down on her head. Anju waited five full seconds before dispelling the water and drying Annabelle off. "Please, get ready to go. I'm sorry, but we can't have a bad start - not today. Can we not have a bad start?"

Annabelle touched a very alert hand to her cheek. Ran that hand through her short cut, messy hair. Brushed her long bangs out of her eyes. "Yeah, okay. I'm sorry - I'm up. I'm...see? Totally ready."

"You're not ready yet."

 _Oh, right..._ Annabelle fumbled with the waistband of her pajama pants, drew her wand. She focused, pointed it at herself: her pajamas disappeared, were replaced by day clothes; another flick and her mouth was full of water, direct; a third and final flourish had her short hair brushed back properly as if done by brush or comb.

"I'm ready," she said clearly, shifting on her feet and flapping her arms at her sides like a penguin. "See? Totally ready. Let's do...what're we doing today?"

Anju looked at her a bit more patiently now, in her satisfaction. "We're going to drop the kids off with Norberta and Emerich, and then we're going to visit Daphne, and _then_ we're going to drop _you off_ at your therapist's office, and then _I_ am going to work. After all that's done with, later this afternoon, you and I are going to make it on time for the magi-arachnid cultural awareness and exchange meeting."

"Yeah," Annabelle said firmly. "Yeah, we're...going to make it to all that. No problem."

"No problem," Anju repeated.

"I'm really fine, Anju! Just- slow start." Annabelle hopped up and down, flapped her arms wildly like she hadn't done since...well, since a couple months now honestly, just to make herself smile and giggle. "See? Thank you for getting me moving! I needed that."

"You're welcome." Anju sighed. She took Annabelle's hand, pulled her in and gave her a long kiss. "Let's get the day started."

"Yeah!" Annabelle grinned. "Let's do it." She flourished her wand at her sleeping bag, and it rolled itself up and popped out of existence. "So- the kids are...?"

"All awake and ready to go," Anju replied, cocking her head and sweeping a wing toward the open bedroom door. "They have been for over an hour now."

"That's good! That's great! Yeah. Great. I'm- proud of them," Annabelle mumbled out, flushing and squirming inside.

Anju smiled. "Tell it to them."

"Yeah, no problem." Annabelle breathed, looked up at the ceiling, and she smiled. She focused, and apparated. She immediately checked herself over - no splinching going on. _Great!_ she encouraged herself. Standing in the middle of their expansion charmed entry room the size of a football field, she turned on the spot and glanced around. Nothing in sight. So that meant...

Annabelle turned her gaze upward, scanned the very, very high ceiling space. _There!_ She pointed her wand at her own throat and altered her voice, increased the volume to absurd levels. " _Hey! Everybody get grounded - or get...grounded._ " She watched with a smile as her six children, all of them nearly six and a half years old now, floated and fluttered their way down toward her.

Immediately upon touching down, her daughter Aki shot forward with a magical burst and slammed into her brother, Ren. Ren toppled over with a yell; Aki fell over too, in a high fit of giggles. Jemma, Shyri and Tej all laughed along with her. Kafe gave a half sort of smile and shuffled his wings against his sides, looked at his feet.

"Hey!" Annabelle said sharply, keeping her arms at her sides and her palms spread flat on her thighs. "Hey - come on, Aki, don't screw with him so early. Or- or at all. How many times have we told you...told you not to do that? Ren, are you hurt? You okay?"

Ren got to his feet, red-faced. He sent a hateful look at Aki (along with a cry of a _really_ foul word in a certain harpy language), who stuck her tongue out at him and giggled some more.

 _Okay, then, he's fine._

Annabelle shook her head, touched her hair briefly. "Alright, uh- uh- yeah, good job everyone for...being all ready to go so early. I'm- proud of you for that. You know it's...it's good. Good...job...annnnd now we're going to get you all off to Norberta's!"

Instant noise. Shrieking, laughing, gleeful and high and excited. And then a whole six-kid shoving match broke out for no valid reason whatsoever - at least as far Annabelle could discern.

Annabelle grated her teeth hard, resisted the urge to bring her hands up over her ears. Still, she flinched horribly and cringed where she stood from it all. She took a step forward, then another. "Can everyone stop it?!" The words burst out of her, loud and harsh.

It got the job done, as much as she instantly regretted their escape from her: all her kids stopped, looked at her. Except-

"Aki, come on, for fuck-" Annabelle cut herself off swiftly. She stepped back, clenched her fists at her sides. Breathed. Breathed. "Aki, _let go of Jemma's hair, would you? Tej, stop making faces at Kafe, you know he doesn't appreciate it! Shyri, don't laugh at your sister! Or- with your other sister! Come on. Can we all just-_ "

Anju floated across the cabin's expansive entry room, and immediately was using feathery arms and strong hands to grab Aki, pull her away from Jemma; she gave Tej a sharp look and a sharper, "Tej, stop it right now, or you're _not_ even going to Norberta's today."; next came a look at Shyri and a hurried word of, "Stop laughing at Jemma this instant! Do _you_ want to go see Norberta? I thought so..."

As everything slowly, very difficultly and _haltingly_ started to settle, Annabelle took several steps back, breathing in and out. She half turned away, reached into her jean pocket and began twirling her newest favorite paperclip in her fingers.

"Everyone's ready to go see Norberta?" Anju spoke, clear and firm, eyeing her children one by one. One by one, she got affirmatives back. It was a really subdued group - for once. "Good. Now..." She looked to Annabelle. "Where's the portkey?"

"Uh..." Annabelle focused, gave her wand a wave; a sparkling rainbow tree branch appeared to hover in front of her kids. "Okay, everyone grab hold, and nobody lets go until we're there. Got it?" she went on, stepping forward to grab the stick herself. Anju gripped it a moment after, gave her a look again.

Their kids all shifted their wings to feathered arms, and they joined their parents in latching onto the portkey. Still, Annabelle cast a sticking charm on their hands. Just...to be sure.

"All right, the portkey turns on in ten seconds," said Anju clearly. "So everyone, let's count it down together, to make sure we're all ready. Ten..."

On "two" the portkey activated. The world spun and whirled for some long moments before stopping again.

Annabelle did away with her sticking charms, and her kids stepped back and fell back - all of them laughing; she flinched.

"Okay, everybody get moving!" Annabelle said loudly, making a shoo-ing motion toward the mountain cave's wide entrance. "Keep it going, keep- being good for momma here, all right?"

"The portkey was off," Anju said quietly, as they watched their kids step into the cave mouth and begin shouting and echoing as much as they could over one another. "You're sure you're fine?"

"I'm sorry. I know I- I messed it up, and I could've hurt you, or the kids, or myself, but I...I thought I had it. I've done it a hundred times before."

"At least nothing _did_ happen," Anju sighed. She put a feathered hand on her arm. Looked at her with imploring, worried eyes. "Just keep trying your best for me, all right? Everything's going to be fine."

"Yeah. Okay. I uh-"

A great roar blasted out of the cave, echoed up and down the mountain and trembled the trees and brush. Some birds took off nearby for better prospects.

"Who's there?! That smell, I know that smell! I smell _rinciri flowers,_ I smell _smelly feathers_ , and- oh, look, I was right!" Norberta slinked out of the depths of the cave, hunkered herself down and snapped her tail forward around her body. She tapped Kafe with the lightest touch in the chest, then swished her tail away and poked at Aki with enough force to get her to stumble back. Aki immediately grabbed onto, and then jumped onto Norberta's tail wholesale, laughing and grinning ear to ear. "All the little ones are here again!" She swished her tail carefully about the air, sending Aki this way and that. She put her tail straight up, hung her upside down, then brought her to her backside and set her down there.

Norberta stepped out of the cave and onto the mountainside proper, her slitted eyes on Annabelle alone. "Mother, I'm so glad you could make it! I haven't gotten to see you since - oh, was it two weeks ago now?"

"Yeah, I'm glad to be here too," Annabelle replied, a big smile coming over her face. She stalked up to Norberta and hugged her long neck, kissed her snout all over. Norberta bumped her hard in the chest, then gave _her_ face a dragon kiss that involved a lot of sloppy, wet tongue motions. "How're you and Emerich? How's Sevra?"

"Emerich spends more time with her than I do," Norberta answered, dismissive. She twisted her long neck around to look at Aki. The girl was doing her best - which was to say, entirely to no effect - to try and tear out one of Norberta's spikes. "But she seems to be doing just as well as she usually is - she's nearly full size, now. We're going to take her to see Charlie again at the end of the month. I don't think his answer is going to change about her, but every time I hope it will."

"That's great!"

"Yes. Very great." Norberta whipped her tail up over herself and gently smacked Aki on the butt, startling her out of her futile efforts to tear out a back spike. Norberta turned her gaze to Anju. "How is your work going? Is the hospital's stressful period over with?"

"With the holidays past us, yes, things should be getting back to the usual level of stress," Anju said seriously. She smiled up at Norberta. "Thanks for asking, sweetie."

"You're welcome. I just was-" Norberta stopped. She ducked her head and peered under herself. There was Jemma and Tej, together piling dirt and mud onto one of Norberta's hind claws. "-I was just doing some work myself lately, and I was getting stressed over it, and it's not even a regular thing, but yours is, so I thought I'd ask you..."

"So, how's _your_ work going?" Annabelle spoke up; she flicked her wand at Jemma and Tej, and the pair of them were pulled out from under Norberta as if by a giant invisible hand. Annabelle tried to sort of...glare down at them in front of her as she said, "Yeah, no - kids, don't play around with Norberta like she's a...playground."

"My work's going fine! I think I'm a good teacher - and, I don't mind having your little ones play around with me like this," Norberta said, giving a little puff of amusement that rippled smoke out her nose. "It's not like they can hurt me. They're funny little things."

"That isn't the point," Annabelle said, breathing a deep breath of cool mountain air. "The point is that they need to _learn to respect other people's boundaries in general._ " She directed this last bit at Jemma and Tej, with a try at an even sterner glare. They looked suitably...not pleased with themselves over it. Or maybe they were just scared of her? God, were they scared of her? Had they ever been? Would they ever be? Annabelle never wanted to find out. "They're really, really terrible at doing that. Especially Aki."

"They've gotten better, particularly this past year," Anju interjected firmly, with a sideways look at Annabelle. A little head shake. She looked at Norberta with a smile. "They've gotten better, trust me."

"I've noticed that," Norberta admitted. "But I still don't mind it."

"We do, so try to mind it for our sakes, please?" said Anju.

"Alright," Norberta said. She curled her tail around Aki and lifted her up off herself, set her down in the dirt again. "Boundaries: minded." She curved her neck to look at Aki behind her, and narrowed her cat eyes at her a little. "No more climbing around on me, all right? Anju and Annabelle don't want you to do that. It's rude. Understand?"

"Y-yes," Aki said dutifully - only because it was Norberta, Annabelle reflected - and oh so reluctantly _still_. She kicked at a bit of dirt. "No climbing," she repeated, much more obviously _sullen_.

"You got it," Norberta said, voice rippling with pleasure. She looked at Jemma and Tej. "That goes for you two, too, you hear me?"

"Yes!" they chorused, scrambling out from under Norberta as she started to shake one of her hind legs.

"Where are Kafe, Shyri and Ren?" Anju spoke up, looking toward the cave entrance. "Was anyone watching out for them?"

"Uh, no - shit," Annabelle muttered. She apparated over to the cave mouth, stepped into it.

"I'm sure they're fine!" Norberta called out after her without much worry. "They're probably just inside with Emerich...and Sevra. Oh, yeah, then they're probably not fine. Sorry!"

 _Fuck your scaly ass, you stupid- agh._ Annabelle apparated further into the cave, apparated again, again, down a left tunnel, into an open chamber with a deep and wide lake in the center of steamy waters. And there were the rest of her kids. Sitting off to the side, with the sleek black, scaly form of Emerich curled up around them. Sevra, great and large in her nearly fully matured state, was on the other side of the chamber, hunkered down with her slitted eyes trained on her father - and Annabelle's kids. Her dark blue scales glistened in the light of a roaring bonfire.

"Emerich, hey," Annabelle spoke cheerfully, starting over on slightly shaky legs. "I uh- sorry they wandered in so far, so fast, I...I don't even know how they did it..."

"Would the answer be, _magic_?" he replied, a dose of mirth in his easy voice.

"Norberta's gotta stop rubbing off on you," Annabelle sighed, shaking her head.

"As you can see, it's too late for that." Emerich pointed at Annabelle's kids with a lazy tail flick. "And, I actually think it's me that needs to start to rub off on her. She's never been very much 'into' the parenting role, that's been very clear to me in these ongoing years."

"Yeah..." Annabelle scratched at her head, ruffled her own hair. She squatted down in front of her kids, rested her arms on her knees. "So, are you all behaving in here? No giving Emerich trouble? No provoking Sevra? You _know_ that if you do that there's going to be hell to pay, in addition to the limbs you're not going to have anymore."

"I haven't," Kafe said softly, but certainly.

"I'm not," Shyri spoke quickly. Ren nodded his agreement.

Annabelle smiled. Looked to Emerich. "Have they?"

"They've been behaving to your people's standards," Emerich informed. "And I've been making sure Sevra does the same for _my_ standards, as well as she can behave without true intelligence."

"Great." Annabelle stood. Stretched her legs out one at a time, gave a little kick to one. "I guess I'll leave them in your capable...claws. Probably best to split them up early, honestly - avoid a lot of the bullshit they get up to as a big group for a little while."

"Anna! You said bullshit!" Shyri cried, utterly _scandalized_.

Annabelle flushed. "Yeah, I did. And- uh- that was bad of me. Sorry. I won't do it again." She gave Emerich a nod, then apparated back out of the whole cave system.

"Are they all right?" Norberta asked.

"Totally fine," Annabelle replied. "They're all huddled up with Emerich. Sevra's actually staying well away, for now."

"Oh, that's probably because she knows he'll tear her apart if she tries to mess with them while they're under his direct love and care," Norberta said gleefully. "She's stupid, but she's not _stupid_."

"Stupid Sevra," Aki said, her tone mimicking the gleefulness of Norberta's not a second ago. In fact, more than that: the words were a direct quote from Norberta some few weeks back. Annabelle dimly wondered how her daughter had even remembered that so clearly and _spontaneously_.

"Aki, no!" Anju said harshly, turning to gaze down at her daughter with utmost disapproval. "No. Never say anything like that again! You don't say that about people. Would you want someone to say that about you?"

Aki looked at her feet. Shuffled her wings. "No..."

"There you go," Annabelle put in, trying to sound half as stern as Anju. "That isn't okay, Aki. If you say anything like that again, uh- I'm going to take you home and you can stay there, all right?"

"Alright," Aki repeated quickly, head coming up fast. "I'm sorry! Bad Aki, bad, don't say that! Aki, say sorry to Sevra."

"Yeah..." Annabelle sighed. "You can say sorry to her later." She looked to Norberta. "She can, can't she? Could you...make sure she does? And, you know, doesn't get her face eaten in the process?"

"Annabelle," Anju huffed. Her eyes were on their other kids, who were floating around with each other a dozen feet off the ground, making spirals and loops.

It was a real surprising show of coordination on their part. Annabelle marveled at what her kids could accomplish when they weren't trying to make each other's lives a complete and utter _living hell_ , all for the sake of shits and giggles.

"I can do that," Norberta said firmly. "Me and Emerich."

"Good," said Anju. "Thank you."

They spent another half an hour or so just visiting, talking and laughing, and collectively watching over each other's kids.

Then, Annabelle and Anju apparated away, leaving their kids in the capable claws of two beloved people.

* * *

 _ **Gwendolyn City, Northern United States**_

Annabelle knocked sharply on the door with her metal fist.

The door opened quickly, and the silent apartment hallway was filled with thrumming, throbbing music of obscene volumes.

A long, clawed, pale hand stretched out to snatch Annabelle and Anju up and pulled them inside; the door slammed shut of its own accord.

Now it was just here, this, trapped in musical explosions. Literally: every time the bass blared, the magical sound system would open up like a wide mouth and let out a booming blast of floating, multicolored musical notes and symbols - along with a random array of shapes and animal images of all kinds. This all floated around the room like bubbles, swirling and weaving in and out of each other, all around; underneath tables, between chairs, behind dressers and paintings and knickknacks. Crescendos and pulses of music caused these shapes and images to pulse themselves, and their sizes to momentarily explode and expand before shrinking down again.

"DAPHNE, HOW DO YOU EVEN LIVE LIKE THIS?!" Annabelle yelled over it all.

Daphne, a wide grin on her face, lifted a hand and showed her a clawed middle finger. She twirled and hopped, danced and spun around the room without a care, that grin just getting bigger and bigger. And every time she made eye contact with Annabelle, looked down at her from her absurd and still-unaltered height...

Annabelle darted forward and grabbed Daphne's hand, pulled her to her and started to dance with her. Wild and furious, around and around they went together. The shapes and images, pulsing and bursting, flowed around them into a whirlwind. A tornado of shifting colors and patterns. It all moved around their arms in spirals, ringed around their waists and weaved between their legs, and between both of their bodies in general. They bunched up between and expanded, pushed them apart, shrunk own and flew off toward Anju to surround her head like a halo.

"I'm so, so happy to see you again!" Annabelle shouted up at Daphne, a grin about as big as Daphne's overtaking her. "How's Maria?"

"In her room - busy," Daphne replied, in that echoing, magical voice of hers. She was talking at normal volumes. Her voice was _heard_ at normal volumes. She gestured with a clawed hand toward a closed door. "Probably sleeping. Probably alone. Either way...wouldn't open that door; she's gross when she sleeps."

"Yeah, I bet," Annabelle laughed loudly. "So how is this all-"

Daphne flicked a finger at the musical speaker system in the corner; the music cut out. All the shapes and images popped out of existence like popped bubbles.

Silence. Clear vision. Clear room.

Annabelle let Daphne go and stepped away. She stuck a finger in her ear and gave it a hard twist or two. Shook her head. Resisted the urge to wrap arms around herself, and the onset of nausea. "Still listening to _Shards of Oblivion_? You've really made this place your own in just three weeks, you know that?"

"Yes, I know," Daphne said proudly, gliding over to a large sofa and falling back onto its length. Her long legs hung off the side and the end of the whole thing. She paused, gave Annabelle a scrutinizing look. A frown. "Sorry for the music - forgot your whole sound thing - do you want to get something to eat or drink? Pretend it's your house." She lifted a long arm and twisted her wrist to gesture blindly toward a kitchen area.

"It's okay - thanks," said Annabelle, apparating over into the kitchen to rummage around the cupboards and cabinets. "Anju, do you want anything?"

"No, no - it's too early for anything," Anju refuted. "I'll get something somewhere before I head to the hospital a bit later. Thank you, sweetie."

"Welcome," grunted Annabelle, snatching up a box of spice-laden crackers from a high cabinet. She apparated back to the living room with it and sat herself down on an armchair. Anju simply lowered herself to the floor in the middle of the room, down to her knees, sat back on them and folded her wings. "Soooo...Daphne...you really did amazing getting this place. I mean, when the care facility said they thought you were ready to be set up with a program like this, it uh- I mean- it's great. Compared to where you were at even just two years ago - and especially _six_ years ago - it's so great."

"Yes," Daphne smiled. She lifted a hand, started to wave it about in time to the imaginary beats of the music she'd had on a minute ago. "I love- love this place. It feels good to be here. I finally caught up with you," she finished, with a little laugh.

"You did," Annabelle agreed. "And hey, you'd actually be...ahead of me, if it wasn't for Anju. I'm just living with her, you know, and I only helped her with the early reconstruction, and now I do the daily upkeep around the village - some errands now and then for her, too - but I couldn't do this. What you've done here. This is- you know, this is mage city living, and it's...it's great. I couldn't handle it."

Daphne smirked. "Thanks - I know you couldn't. You like your out of the way, quiet places. Living out there...in the wilds...perfect for you."

Annabelle stuffed three crackers into her mouth at once. "Yeah, yeah it is. I love it out there."

"I love it here," said Daphne simply. "Maria loves it."

"That's good. She's been really good, hasn't she? No hurting herself or anything lately?"

"Not in weeks," Daphne confirmed, smiling. "I check on her. All the time. I make sure. She's better too."

"Good, good. And...you two are still keeping in touch with the care facility counselor?"

"Yes, mom," Daphne snarked out - totally good-natured, of course. "I wash my bras and clip my nails too."

"No you don't."

"Shut up."

"Love you."

"Idiot." Daphne giggled quite suddenly. "Lovely idiot. My lovely idiot..."

Annabelle smiled. "Yeah, that's me: the lovely idiot."

"Hey," Daphne spoke, as if a thought had struck her. "You know Gertrude and Teafa...booked...booked..." She stalled. Faltered. Her eyes glazed, and her lips moved silently. "Booked...thing at...sing, sing and they dance, you...know? At...Gwendolyn downtown...place...name...what's the name? What does it mean? Booked a...?" She let it trail away, staring at Annabelle in equal parts frustration and hope.

"Act? Gig? Routine?" Annabelle rattled off, her heart bursting for her friend. "You're saying they're going to be here? Play here? I heard they'd started a band or something, but I didn't pay too much attention to it otherwise." _I should have. I feel like a shitty friend for it..._

"Yes," Daphne said, seeming to shrug off her prior struggles and move on. "They're doing that soon. At the downtown- pub place. It has a stage for itself. They have posters. I'm going to go. I wanted to ask you to come with me. When was...last time you saw her?"

"Uh..." Annabelle's brain went blank. "No clue? A few months ago? A year, maybe?"

"Try two, sweetie," Anju supplied, empathetic.

"Oh, damn," Annabelle muttered. "Yeah, I- yeah! I'd love to go with you. Hang out, see Gertrude again. Yeah. And Teafa. Hope she's past the whole bitter racist shit she was still on about last I met her. Well, not _racist_ , but, you know...speciesist."

"Still really funny," Daphne snorted. "Scientists now say most of us _humanoids_ share common ancestor. Same DNA and shit. It's how we have half and half kids together all the time - well, that and a big help from magic to smooth out the details. Magic seems to fix all the genetic errors they say _should_ be occurring in us all because of the mixing. Incompatible stuff. Anyway...it means Teafa hates herself too."

"Oh yeah, she definitely does," Annabelle said seriously. "In more ways than just that one."

"Maybe she'll get over it," Anju said, soft and contemplative.

Annabelle smiled. "Well, Gertrude's the best person to help with that. So it's a good thing they're...apparently doing a band together."

"Yeah." Daphne smiled too. "Gertrude's a rude little asshole, but she has a good heart."

"Yeah," Annabelle echoed. "So, so- do you have any plans for a job or something? Does Maria?"

"Not yet," Daphne said. "We're working on that. Still talking to care facility about it. Have to show them a year and a half of good living first, no big mistakes - they give us a budget and manage our legal stuff. I swear I'll die bored before then though."

Annabelle laughed.

Daphne looked to Anju. "Still working at hospital? Times were...you were 8 AM to 2 PM, then break until 6 PM, then 6 PM to 12 midnight?"

"That's perfectly spot on." Anju smiled warmly. "I still am, yes. It's been terribly busy the past few weeks, but it's going to slow down again soon, thankfully."

"Glad to hear that," Daphne said, totally earnest. She was quiet. "When you and Annabelle going to put a ring on things between each other? Or whatever harpy culture has for a marriage equivalent?"

"Uhm..." Annabelle looked at Anju; Anju looked at her. They both sort of shrugged. "We haven't thought about it. Things are fine how they are, and it's not like a legal status about it would change much for us, with how we're living and all. I mean, it's nice that it's an option for us now - nonhuman intermarriage bills that've been passed in recent years are so great to see in human societies - but..."

"We're not too pressed to do it," Anju added. "Maybe in another few years?"

"Maybe," Annabelle laughed.

"Cute," Daphne giggled. "I love you two."

"And we love you right back," Anju assured. "You're an amazing person, who's done some amazing things in her life. If it wasn't for you, Annabelle wouldn't be half of who she is today! And I wouldn't have met her because of it. So, I suppose...thank you, Daphne, for leading me to the woman I love so much. The woman I never thought I'd _ever_ love so much."

"Same here - thanks, Daffy," said Annabelle, flashing her friend a most affectionate of smiles.

Daphne stretched out on the sofa, gave a fake yawn. "Any time. Call me if you need a matchmaker again in future. First time was free, next time I'll charge you."

"Uh-huh."

An hour's worth of visiting time was spent with Daphne before they had to leave. They left with a promise to return at least every two weeks; it was something Annabelle wanted to hold herself to.

After seeing Anju off to the hospital and getting in a quick meal together - Annabelle had pushed it - Annabelle found herself at the little office building of her long-standing counselor.

"How's your coping?"

"Coping?" Annabelle repeated. She stretched out on the cool, good-smelling leather sofa. Looked at the ceiling. She twirled a rubber band she had looped around her fingers. Loved the isolated room, that silence. "The coping is fine. It's- it's the...the _after_ , and the _before_ that I just...seem to suck at."

"Don't sell yourself short, Annabelle."

"Don't make goddamn short jokes at me, Jenny. They weren't funny when I was thirteen, they're not going to be funny now."

"Oh, shush - you know it wasn't intentional." Jenny Hargrove leaned forward in her chair, looked Annabelle in the eye on the neat leather sofa. "So," she continued on, serious again. "would you like to tell me a bit about that?"

"About...?"

"The before and the after."

"Yeah, okay. I- I mean- I don't know. Anju's still just...a hell of a lot better than I am with the kids. I think I'm doing okay, she says I am, but...I don't think so, sometimes. We've kind of already talked about it, and she says I'm ineffectual because I'm always holding myself back. I'm...scared to, you know..."

"You're scared that, in trying to be more assertive and commanding, you'll cross the line into becoming abusive."

"Yeah. Ever since they were just hatched, that's been my number one fear in the world. A-about myself. I know how I am, you know how I am. Those days I had as a kid, when I had to come see you again because I'd just lost it and hit Daphne, or Lisa, or a teacher...I never want to have a day where I am that way again - but toward my kids instead of just my friends or strangers. Not that it was good when I _was,_ even toward them! But, you know! I've used every single trick and strategy and coping mechanism I've ever known to always keep myself from even getting close to that. To how my relatives were to me. To how I know I can be, to my own kids if I...just for a second, if I...if my hand comes up, if I have that anger. I never want to do that. If I do, I'm going to throw myself in the nearest jail cell and throw away the key."

"And that's good of you to recognize. I'd say you've done very well these past six years, Annabelle."

"But..."

"But, I think, that if you want to be a bit more _effective_ as a parent, you _need_ to start taking tiny steps toward being more assertive. You need to let a bit of what you're always doing go. _You_ _need to trust yourself_ , _Annabelle._ Trust yourself with your kids."

"I'm too scared."

"I know. And you can be scared - scared is fine, healthy, even - but crippling fear...not so much. You need to let that go, you need to get past that. Just...just ease up, Annabelle. Just try to ease up a little. Trust yourself."

"No," Annabelle refuted, shaking her head. "No, I- I can't."

"Annabelle," Jenny began, quiet and kind. "have you ever once hit any of your kids?"

"No!"

"What about Anju?"

" _No._ "

"Well there you go. You haven't done it once in six years of parenting and domestic partnership: why do you think you'd start now?"

"Because I- I could! I always can, I...I have before, with others. I don't want to, but it happens!"

"You don't think you've grown up since then? Learned to properly restrain yourself? Learned to step back, take a breath, get away when you feel you have to?"

"I have, I just...don't think it'll be enough one day..." Annabelle mumbled. "One day it's going to be too much stress, I'm going to be in too bad a place, and I'm going to get way overstimulated, and I'll go too far, and I- I don't want to..."

Jenny sighed. "Alright, then. You know I can't force you to do anything...but I hope you'll also remember that, in all these years I've worked with you, my advice has never steered you wrong. Has it?"

"No..." Annabelle mumbled, looking away. "I guess not."

Jenny just looked at her.

"I'll...think about it?" Annabelle said, filling the silence. The words were wrenched from her teeth.

Jenny smiled softly at her. "That's the best I can hope for from you, for now, I think."

"Yeah, it is." Annabelle laughed, her anxiety spiking. She balled up her metal fist in her lap and squirmed it around. Played with her jeans. Pinched and tugged. "I uh- I- I saw Daphne today! And Norberta, again, too. I hadn't seen either of them in a while. It was nice. I- I feel nice today. Better than I have in a while. I know the motto, the whole thing, you know, about how if you just get moving it's like a train, and it'll keep going, and how doing different things helps a lot too, and...yeah, I feel good."

"Good. I'm glad."

"Yeah, me too. Except- uh..." Annabelle sighed; she looked down at her rubber band and stretched it to the point of nearly breaking, then let it snap against her hands. "Except- something that keeps popping up in my head the past few weeks..."

"Yes?"

"My aunt. She's uhm, getting out of prison - rehab, whatever - in two months. I already told her, last time we met, that I was going to be there for her when she got released, you know? I said that, and I- I've hoped that she's stayed the same as what I- I mean- _who_ I saw that visit-" Annabelle cut herself off. She twisted the rubber band into X's and knots around her fingers individually. Pulled it all tight to cut circulation. She stared down at her discolored fingers and bit her inner cheek. "I hate her, I hate everything she ever did to me, everything she said, but I- she apologized, and she- if she's going to be better, shouldn't I stick with it? With what I told her? With um- how she is? How I promised I'd give her a chance? Or should I just not show up and forget about it? I know, I know the whole thing about, 'Forgiveness is about you, not the one who hurt you,' but I just feel like...or, never mind, is this all just childhood stockholm talking? Me wanting to give her a chance, have her in my life again? Is that me wanting approval from her, or being scared to upset her by cutting her entirely, forever? Not even doing this, giving her this chance? I just, I just- I can't- I don't know-"

Annabelle turned, let out a long breath, and slammed her flesh and blood fist into the wall above the back of the sofa. She kept breathing. Fast, hard. Shallow as could be.

"Annabelle, you-"

"I know, I know! Don't hurt yourself, don't hurt _other things_ when you get stressed, or pissed, I know! I just- I can't stop thinking and I don't even know what I should be thinking!"

"I can see that. I see you, Annabelle, and I can hear what you're saying, and I can tell what you're feeling. But we can't discuss it like this. You need to get calm again. It's okay if you want to vent it all out for me first, but you do need to calm down for me, okay?"

"Yeah," Annabelle breathed a harsh breath. Her throat was hurting. Too tight. She brought her fist down and buried it in her lap. Twisted it into her shirt. Clutched it in her metal fingers tight. "Yeah...I'm- s-sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to just-"

"It's all right!" Jenny said quickly, but kindly. She sat back and folded her hands - didn't try to reach out and touch Annabelle at all. "Annabelle, it's perfectly all right. It's normal, and natural, what you're feeling. You know this. You know me. You know I'm not mad at you, I'm not upset. Right?"

"R-right..."

"Would you like me to leave, and give you a few minutes?" Jenny spoke softly.

"Yeah. Please. Sorry."

Jenny stood, and left the room with a quiet snap of the door.

* * *

 _ **Beaverhead National Forest, Montana USA**_

Annabelle and Anju arrived, hand in hand - errr, wing - in the middle of the woods. The latter was a bit fatigued, but she was still smiling as her eyes roamed the area.

"What do you think?" Anju spoke, nudging Annabelle with her wing.

"This is great - I love it. Almost reminds me of home. Except for, you know..." Annabelle gestured around herself, at the tall, thick trees strung across with great layers of webbing that stretched on for many miles.

"The scenery is beautiful," Anju added on, a smile on her lips. "I can see why they'd choose it."

*Actually, we chose it because it was fairly isolated from any of your nonmagical people's dens. With the aid of magic - even more so.*

Annabelle turned, found herself eye to eye with a very large magi-arachnid of sleekness, glossy emerald exoskeleton, and a pair of grabby crab type limbs in addition to the usual mandibles and the like. *Hey!* she smiled. *I'm Annabelle Potter!*

*Oh, I'm aware - the Queen speaks _very_ highly of you,* said the magi-arachnid, a note of satisfaction in their tone. *My name's Laiken.*

*Good name - nice to meet you.*

*And you, too.*

*Sooo...* Annabelle glanced around them. Waved a hand at the small scattering of humans standing about. No more than a dozen. *There doesn't seem to be too many people here. Yet...or at all?*

*It's...uncertain.* Laiken mimicked her, gave a look around the forest.

*At least a few people showed up at all.*

*Yes,* Laiken agreed. *I'm aware of the historically ingrained fears the majority of your people has for 'arachnid' species - and 'serpents' too. I understand it to be a defense mechanism of sorts?*

*Something like that, yeah. Don't take it personally. Humans- we tend to- we categorize, we generalize, it's how our brains are I guess. But...when we get down into the individual, the exceptions and the personal...then we can actually throw away that other stuff and get past it all. It just...it takes face to face, it takes time.*

*I understand that. I've already seen it, in a 'family' of your humans who were recently rescued from a fire not far from here by some of my kind, from another tribe in this region. I've also heard about other humans choosing to stay put, hide, and injure themselves and die rather than share a proximity with my kind, no matter what the reason. Still other humans seem to feel nothing toward us but a desire to harm us on sight - and they do.*

*Yeah, those humans are dumb.*

*Perhaps.* A pause. *That's why we're having this 'awareness event,' isn't it? To make dumb humans become...less so.*

*That was...a joke?*

*Yes. Was it acceptably humorous? I've heard that humans respond to humor better than anything else.*

Annabelle ran her hand through her hair. *It was good. I just- I- uhm- I'm not exactly the best choice if you want to judge humor. I don't get it, myself. I'm...different from other humans, you know. Mentally. In my brain. Errr, soul, that is - or both - um...you know what I mean!*

*I see. I won't waste further attempts at humor on you, then.*

*Thanks,* said Annabelle honestly. *It's just awkward for me...sooo...*

*You're welcome.*

"Okay, so, this is Laiken," Annabelle spoke to Anju. "They're...uh..." She paused. *Sorry - are you running this whole thing, or is it one of the others here?*

*We're _all_ 'running this thing.' We have help from another Speaker, like yourself, who will be acting as 'translator' for us. We're grateful to them for agreeing to do so for us.*

*Right. Okay.* She shook her head. She looked toward a group of five humans, while Anju introduced herself to Laiken properly. Another Speaker was here? She'd only run into Kyle because he had been actively seeking her out, because he had actively known about her ability. But here...now...she'd be meeting a third Speaker in her life. And it was all thanks to...well, herself. To this...brave new world she'd brought crashing down on everyone. A world that could _allow_ for such private, unknown people to come out into the open with themselves.

Annabelle really wondered just how many others were out there in the world. Was her gift actually something relatively common? Was it just something everyone kept secret, out of preference or stigma, or did they never learn it about themselves to begin with?

That'd really be something.

*Which person's the Speaker here?* she asked Laiken. Laiken rotated on the spot, lifted a limb and gestured toward a lone human, standing clear and apart from anyone else. They were silent, drawn in on themself; their unkempt, short blonde hair ruffled in the breeze. They had their head down, their eyes on their own shoes. *Okay, thanks.* She glanced at Anju, uttered a quick, "Be back in a second," and started off across the forest floor. Leaves crunched under her boots, and bits of webbing stuck to them too.

*Hey!* Annabelle said loudly.

That head came up fast. Wide, light blue eyes regarded her. Thin lips parted. *Hi.*

*Uh, yeah, uhm...* Annabelle smiled, stuck out a hand. *Nice to meet you and stuff. I'm Annabelle Potter. I heard you were a Speaker too, and I've only ever met one other person who was, so I thought while I was here, why not introduce myself?*

*I'm Quinn.* Their head dropped to their chest again.

*Nice name. I like it.*

Quinn's eyes remained fixed on their feet. *Thank you.*

Annabelle smiled. *So, how'd you first figure out you could talk with spiders - and magi-arachnids, too?*

Quinn lowered themself to the forest floor; as they did so, leaves and webbing and twigs all became displaced, floated aside to make a little clearing of solid dirt. They still didn't look at Annabelle. Their eyes were roaming around themself, this way and that in an almost frenzied manner, all across the ground. Sometimes their eyes would flicker up to a tree trunk, or a particular bunch of branches, but then they'd be back low again.

Annabelle sat down too, right across from Quinn. She folded her hands in her lap.

*I grew up here,* spoke Quinn, in quiet tones. They were smiling, though it seemed more to themself than to Annabelle. *I live in a den not far from this spot. The... _magi-arachnids_ made me one of their own, when I was little, and they raised me. They taught me magic. They protected me. We were quiet, and we were together with ourselves. Until you changed things for everyone, along with the Queen you inspired.*

*Nyllia.*

*Yes. The foreign ruler. She has a very different way of managing the tribes compared with any previous queens before her.*

*Different, but not _bad_ , right?* Annabelle didn't really want to think that Nyllia was making people upset or whatever. Was she turning out to be a shitty ruler or something? *I mean, she put in laws for the tribes, across the dens, to stop them all from attacking and eating anybody who comes through these parts, and she's...done other stuff too. Good stuff. At least, uh, good by most standards of morality.*

*Different, but not bad,* Quinn spoke. Their eyes spared a moment to flit up and meet with Annabelle's, before darting away again. They smiled again. *Things are quieter than they were before.*

*Yeah, I think that happens when you're banned from being in a state of total war with each other like all these tribes used to be.*

*The Queen's rule isn't enforced absolutely; there are still tribes that are interested in creating conflict with the rest, and with the non-arachnid societies too.*

Annabelle brushed absently at her short hair. *Yeah...how's that going?*

*The Queen's tribes are finding it all a lot more difficult to take a den alive. Turning the captured dens themselves into prisons for their previous inhabitants makes it easier - it cuts out transport issues to our own dens - but it's still taking a long time to sort out. Especially because there are members of these tribes who are in minority to their own, and who always opposed the view of continuing the wars. It takes time and conversation to sort those out from the rest. The liars don't help, either,* Quinn finished thoughtfully.

*Have you ever met Nyllia in person?*

*Once.*

*What did you think about her?*

*She's level-headed, reasonable, fair and just. And she cares. Maybe more than she should - more than her nature should allow for.*

*Is that good or bad?*

*Most of the time, it's good, I think. She's taking most of these tribes in a new direction, one seldom explored in the entirety of their histories together across the world. But other times, in some situations, it's clearly been a bad thing. It's made some things more difficult.*

*Yeah? How's that?*

Quinn's frantic gaze passed over Annabelle's face - lingered a heartbeat. *She can't make decisions that should be made, that most of us are telling her she should make.*

*Like...?*

*Destroying dens entirely, quickly, instead of sending in droves of tribe warriors to suffer and linger, and suffer more for lingering. Accidents, escapes, riots, lies and spies. And then there are the eggs and infants to be sorted out, taken in, and raised by our tribes; it's not a short, easy thing to deal with. And all of this, it's hurting and killing many just to do it, when those lives would've been saved by just...burning these dens from the outside. We have the magic to do it, most of us have the will to do it. It's _the Queen's_ _will_ that holds us back from such actions. Her will...causes unrest, and negativity. Bitterness, anger and grief. Spite. These are things our tribes are feeling, as time goes on, as we commit to her way of doing this.*

*We.*

*Yes. I've already heard about several members of our tribes leaving it for others. For the opposing, warring tribes. Other individuals just leave the tribe and stay apart from all of it.*

*That sucks.*

*Yes, it does.*

*You considering it?*

*Sometimes I do. More and more, lately; I'd like to use it as an excuse to leave my tribe and venture into human civilization - to experience what I should have had from the start.* There wasn't any mourning in the statement, no wistfulness - just...casual curiosity, a distant interest.

*If you need the excuse, I'll cover for you.*

Quinn smiled, looked Annabelle in the eye for a full, heavy second. *I appreciate that.*

*Soooo...this whole awareness meeting...thing...*

*Yes?*

*Did you guys come up with it on your own, or was it Nyllia's idea? Is she forcing you to put it on and all?*

*Both.* Quinn _laughed_.

* * *

 _ **Rynegaul Village**_

Annabelle took up the mirrorcaller and settled back onto her bed. The bedroom was dark and quiet; it was perfect.

"Nofhug?" she said into the mirror.

"Annabelle." Cheerful eyes within a dark green face peered out of the glass at her. "Is there something you need?" the rough, deep voice of the orc continued.

"Yeah. It's...uhm..."

Nofhug's dirtied, green face twisted. Lips spread ever so slightly, revealing teeth and prominent lower jawed fangs so typical of her people. "You want to hear about Oguk again."

"Yeah, if it's not, uh- if you're not..."

"How many times must I tell you: I _enjoy_ talking about my child. Zir exploits within and beyond our clan are to be celebrated, not forgotten. While, yes, often times my soul still hurts for zir, I would not do zir the disrespect of _ignoring that ze was ever here on this Earth._ Zir accident sent zir to the next world, but that does not mean ze was never _here_."

"Sorry."

"It is fine. You did me no offense. I am glad you keep such an interest in zir, yourself. Ze spoke about you often - you brought zir much fame and fortune, by association alone. And of course, you brought zir a deep and true friendship. One I admit I could never have seen as being possible between one of my people, and one of yours."

"Yeah. Okay. Uh...so, whatever you want to tell me about...just...you know, when you're ready."

"Of course." Nofhug's dark green lips held a great and light smile. "Let me think..."

* * *

After a long conversation with Nofhug, Annabelle still remained alone. Still in the dark and quiet of her room.

She sat, cross-legged, against the bed's headboard. She was focused, had her wand out. Pointed at the sizable block of wood in her hand. She was cutting at it, shaping it as best she could - carving something a lot more interesting than a cube from it.

She only had her memories to go off of for reference, but...if she could get the design right...

Two hours passed her by with this, until she was done and satisfied.

Annabelle rolled off the bed and carried the fresh wood statuette through her home. Down the hall, turned and passed through kitchen, dining hall, into the sitting room. There was Anju, on a mirrorcall with someone whom Annabelle gleaned was a friend from Anju's work.

Annabelle hid the statuette under her shirt as she walked over and sat with Anju on the sofa. Anju gave her a befuddled, amused look - gave a glance at her misshapen top - and returned to her call. A few minutes later and Anju ended her call and set her mirror aside. She reformed her wings, losing feathered arms and talon-ended fingers to their natural state again.

"What do you have there?" Anju said, gesturing an amused wing at Annabelle's lap.

Annabelle glanced down and pulled the statuette out. Shifted to the side and held it up. She hesitated, then gave it a tap with her wand - the statuette came to life, the wings spread, and on those wings water coalesced. Formed, but never actually dripped off of it. To her touch it was wet, but she never _got_ wet. "Uh- I- I made this for you."

"Made what-" Anju froze as her mind took in the carving. The features. The water. " _Oh...oh you, oh...Annabelle..._ "

"Yeah. It's- the concept is uh, _ondine_? It's - um, it's- from the whole creation story, right? The goddess Kyaru and the...water, dripping off her wings? When she was making the skies, all the clouds and the water they had in them. She made it all, and then it all came down on her, and then she couldn't fly in that first rain of the world? And then, uh, that's um, the burden of- that's the regrets, the sorrow, the- and that's how the oceans came to be. Once she'd shed all the weight, all that water, freed herself, and she was able to go higher again, faster again. She didn't regret making what she made, how it turned out. Because after that, she met up with Reika, who had come up out of her ocean, and...I have this right, right?"

"Yes," Anju confirmed, quiet. Almost toneless.

"Yeah. So, I just...I'm sorry if it's like, uhm, if I messed up the culture, if it's like- appropriation or- I don't know, I just- I've learned stuff from you over the years, I've participated in stuff, and...I knew about this and I knew...it was important, and special, and...your village used to make them." Annabelle offered the little wooden object to Anju. "I know it symbolizes all that stuff - remorse, regret, sadness, you know - and I know I've got a lot of that here. I've been a pretty shitty, uh- domestic- domestic partner person lately, and a shitty parent too, and I'm sorry for it all, and I'm- I'm going to work on being better. Even if I...if I gotta get on meds, you know, chemical pills or magic potions. Doesn't matter. As long as it...helps me. I don't want to...treat you this way, I don't want to be uh- you don't deserve it, you know, having to put up with my shit. Like this morning! I wasn't good, I wasn't getting up, and I screwed up the Portkey, and I just- I just- so...yeah. This is...this is an apology and a promise, from me to you, Anju."

Anju's lips shook. She gazed at the object in Annabelle's hands with shimmering eyes. A wing came up, feathers brushed the carving of Kyaru. "You...you really did this for me? All by yourself?"

"Yeah. I mean, I had to use my wand, a bit of magic to make the cuts, and the whole water thing, but...I didn't just bring it up out of nowhere or anything. It's...as natural as I could make it. I tried to stick how- you know, how you said your people always made them. Sorry, though, if it- uh, if it still looks like shit anyway. I wasn't sure about-"

Anju sprang onto Annabelle, wrapped her in her wings and started crying into her shoulder.

"Yeah..." Annabelle trailed off, stroked Anju's backside. Held her gently - awkwardly. "You're welcome."

* * *

 _ **January 13, 2005 - Gwendolyn City, California USA**_

"What would you like this evening, Ms.?"

"Nothing. I'm good - just going to drink some water." Annabelle held up her wand and recently conjured glass.

"Ok." The waiter turned attentions to Anju. "If that's all, we'll have your drink in a moment, then."

Anju gave a wide smile and a nod. "Thank you."

Annabelle leaned onto the table, propped her head in her hands.

"Are you feeling okay enough to do this?" Anju spoke, brushing her cheek with a wing. "We could go home, I'm sure that Gertrude will understand."

"No, I'm good," Annabelle said quickly. She lifted her head and put her hands in her lap. "I'm great, I'm- just fine! I just need- water. I don't drink enough of that stuff these days. It's just - headache. Dehydrated. It's not a big deal. This is important for her, and I said I'd be here," she added, in what she couldn't help but be a quiet murmur.

"All right." Anju's wing brushed her again in that way she always had. Gave her that look with those warm eyes. Annabelle looked her in the eye right back, long enough to smile at her, then looked away again as the familiar discomfort and anxiety set in.

After Anju got her drink, they ordered some food together.

Annabelle kept her eyes on the stage as she absently dug into her meal. It was still an _empty_ stage; where were Gertrude and Teafa? Thankfully, it didn't take long for her to get an answer. Hardly a minute had gone by when there was a loud _pop_ from up on the stage, and there they stood.

Gertrude, small and assured, and clad in all black; black dress, black leggings, black slippers, and a chain necklace with a chicken-egg sized, black spinel gemstone. Her outfit was still in her usual, preferred state of torn and tattered - though, Annabelle thought it really _complimented_ her whole look, as opposed to making her look any sort of unkempt.

Teafa, on the other hand, was clad in a flowing gown of grass green, to compliment her gray skin, glowing white hair and silver eyes. It was an intricate gown of ruffles and long trails - but not in any way that might have made it appear _oversized_ on her. Her waist-length hair wasn't hanging in shimmering curtains, as per _her_ usual: it was made up into several buns and a high, thick ponytail atop her head.

Teafa flexed an absent hand beside herself, reached up and tapped the side of her mouth. She stepped forward to the stage's edge, centered. Her melodic voice reached across the bar, heard by everyone as if she were standing only a foot in front of them instead of a good dozen or more that she actually was. "Hello, people. My name is Teafa - and back there is Gertrude - and we are _The Quiet R Experience_. We are here to perform a few original pieces we've created together. We hope you enjoy them. If you do, be sure to drink more, tip more, and give your thanks to the bartender over there, Ms. Paula Rose, for letting us be here in Gwendolyn's third most popular bar tonight."

Annabelle nearly facepalmed. To those who didn't have any time spent around banshees, those standard melodic tones were probably taken for enthusiasm and enjoyment, but, to someone who _had_ been around them before...Teafa was absolutely monotone, and sounded bored out of her damn mind. The utter _height_ of disinterest in the crowd she was supposed to be playing to. Of course, that was classic Teafa, when faced with humans. Then again, with the response she got from the people seated around Annabelle - a few light claps of appreciation, a whistle or two, and chatterings about - could anyone deny it was working anyway? Teafa didn't _need_ to do anything more than phone it in to get any sort of positive feedback from an ignorant audience...and was that so bad?

Maybe? Maybe not. Regardless, Annabelle sure laughed about it (causing a few nearby eyes to commit a mix of staring and _glaring_ ).

"Everybody hold onto your asses here, because we don't have any Freezing Charms on these lips!" Gertrude gleefully burst out. She gave a hand a little shake, and in her grasp appeared a small, glossy black guitar. A full set of drums came into spontaneous existence off to her left; a pair of drumsticks, clearly enchanted, hovered above the center drums in waiting.

Teafa snapped her fingers at Gertrude, impatient and impassioned; Gertrude flashed Teafa her middle claw, then she stamped a small foot to start off her enchanted drumset and took up strumming her guitar.

Teafa drew breath and fixed her gaze on a point far over the heads of the bar patrons. She brought her slender hands up to her chest, and began to sing.

Annabelle gave the stage her fullest attention. Not ten seconds in and Teafa was very casually hitting some of the highest notes, making the most rapid changes in pitch and timings that Annabelle had ever heard in her life - or thought could be possible.

Possible for some _people_...but not at all for _human people_.

Sharp confidence and raw passion was just _rippling_ off Teafa, like waves of a tsunami. Annabelle could feel it around her, all around the bar. And Teafa was smiling ear to ear, whirling left and right with precision and expertise, every twirl of a heel, each step aside, forward and back, and every motion of an arm to flow into a burst of magic this way and that, to produce swirling colors and miniature fireworks, that melted into liquid and ringed Teafa's waist and limbs in pattern and sync with her. It was a _very far cry_ from the flat, droning woman who'd done the introductions to the act.

" _...you know you're not the only one who seeeeeeeees the wooo-o-ooo-orld for what it iiiiissss-uh-uh-uh!_ " Teafa's high notes just rose and rose, switching into pure _frequency_ and _tones_ that droned in the bar. They switched back down again in an instant, back up into frequency, higher, back down, back up again. And all the while, Gertrude's small hands were flying about the strings, flicking and striking in combinations galore, and making transitions in a near frenzy of chaos that somehow still managed to sound pleasing and actually intentional.

Teafa's singing went on, faster and more wild, but with an order to it that was beautiful. Gertrude's strumming matched her in rising insanity of order. On and up, down and slow, fast and faster. When it seemed to be nearing the end, Teafa shot straight up into frequencies again - and stayed there. And then she just kept going, higher and higher-

The noises all stopped entirely. But Teafa was still up there, hand to her chest and singing her soul out in a noiseless pantomime. Ten seconds passed, filled with nothing but the frantic solo guitar-ing of Gertrude, and then Teafa's singing all cut right back in again, shrill and gorgeous and vibrating - and the bar was following suit. Glasses shattered, tables exploded, chairs broke out from under people, and the liquids in people's drinks and bottles began to bubble like they were boiling over.

Annabelle's seat shattered under her, and she fell flat on her ass among splinters. She felt the telltale tingles of magic buffeting her like ocean waves, and she understood. Teafa had gone right past plain old impossible vocals and frequencies, and all the way up into her species' trademark magical screams. The screams that could get so high they could cause entire buildings to collapse, and slaughter an entire village of hundreds by making everyone's heads explode.

Thankfully, Teafa stopped way before that point. Her magical screeching died away, and she bowed her head. She sort of blinked around herself, stared out at the damages she'd caused as if finally seeing it. Then she pulled out a wand, her gray cheeks flushing silver, and repaired everything with a grand sweep and a spattering of panicked cries of, "I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, so sorry!" She shoved a silver hand into her dress and tore out a huge wad of cash from a nonexistent pocket; Gertrude leapt at Teafa and half-seriously swiped at her with a horrified cry of, " _Goddammit, no, we need that!_ " Teafa stumbled over to the bar counter and spread it all out. "Sorry - take this for the damages, and for everyone's food and drinks! Won't happen again!"

"The kind of singing you just pulled off, I might just allow it," the bartender waved off, staring at her with a weak sort of grin on her face. She turned and gestured at the crowd. Not many people were getting up and leaving. And the tips jar was clanging with galleons. A wave of Ms. Rose's wand and every glass, chair and table was repaired without a crack or seam. "See? All fixed up. You and your crazy little lady friend can keep going tonight - no harm done."

"Well, all right," Teafa said hesitantly. "Right," Teafa breathed on, brushing a stray lock of silver behind an ear. She left the bar and strode back up onto the stage. "Gertrude, warm up, you're on in two minutes for main act."

"Do you have any idea...how much fast food I could've gotten with that money you wasted?!" Gertrude croaked, kicking at her guitar and vanishing it into thin air. "Why do we even make money with these acts if you're just going to get rid of it first chance you get? Some of that was my half!"

"Then the patrons and owner of this establishment will be very grateful to you for paying for their damaged goods," Teafa said lowly, a hiss of warning in her voice. "Warm up, blow their minds, and you can make back twice what I gave away."

"You bitch," Gertrude rasped. "Learn to control your voice - I'm not losing more cash to _you_ losing control of your voice-"

"I'll _show you_ losing control of my voice!" Teafa snarled, baring her perfect teeth. "Apparently the _humans_ think it's a good thing I got so carried away with my passions, and considering how much you _love_ to talk about how much you _love them_ , and how much _I should love them too_ , you shouldn't have a problem with it!"

Gertrude stared up at her. She shrugged. "Oh, well okay then." Clearing her throat, she looked out across the bar. She held out a small hand to her left, and a microphone zoomed into her grasp. Teafa flicked her finger at the drumset to poise it again, as well as conjured up a new guitar. Teafa didn't seem to have any intentions of playing either instrument, however: both were swathed in magic, hovering on the stage alone. Teafa, rather, stepped up and took a position beside Gertrude, placing a hand to her chest again. Backup singer, it seemed.

"Okay, people, this next song we're going to sing for you is one that I wrote!" Gertrude yelled out, nothing but delighted. "And I'd like to dedicate it to the beautiful woman at the table right over _there_ \- Annabelle! It's been a few years! How have you been? I saw you in the papers again a few weeks back! That was a _crazy_ read, let me tell you. Oh, Anju, you're here too? What a surprise! But a welcome one, for sure. How are the kids?"

Annabelle groaned, looked across the bar at Gertrude. Waved at her with a lazy metal arm. Did her best to mouth, " _Later!_ "

Gertrude flashed her a grin, toyed with her hair, and then she dropped her eyes to the microphone in her hands. She focused herself. Prepared herself.

Then, she sang. Soon enough, Teafa joined in, and the act was in full swing.

Some minutes later, after it ended, Gertrude went through a second song. Then, Teafa sang through two more compositions. After they were completely done and over, Annabelle got up from her table and moved to meet them in front of the stage.

"How have you two survived the past couple years together?"

Both women became lost in memories.

"It's been hell," Gertrude admitted freely. "But we work good together in the depths of hell, don't we?"

"We do," Teafa confirmed, glaring. The glare quickly melted into an amused smile, however.

"And it makes the sex even more of a hell of a time!" Gertrude continued, her grin widening. Teafa smacked her on the shoulder, turned away and lifted her chin with a little _huff_.

"I don't know why I still love her, or why she loves me, but I do and she does," Teafa informed Annabelle, shaking her head.

"Well, uh, do you want to sit down with me and Anju over there at our table?" Annabelle gestured. "We can talk, drink some sweet stuff - maybe eat, if you two haven't tonight?"

"That sounds great," Gertrude enthused. She gave Teafa a pat on the thigh and scurried over to Anju.

Teafa looked after Gertrude, shook her head and sighed. A side glance was given to Annabelle. A pause. Nervousness. "Have you...ever been in a mall building before?" she said, almost spontaneously.

"Um, once or twice," Annabelle replied. "Why?"

Teafa shifted her stance. A hand came up to twirl a stray silver lock. "Gertrude said I should...ask you to take me to one sometime. She says it's one of the best places to see a mixture of...samples of everything there is to know about human culture."

"Well, I don't know about that, but...sure," said Annabelle, smiling. "I'd love to go to a mall with you. We could get some nice food, maybe try out clothes?"

"Right." Teafa gave a nod. "Just- tell me when you'd be free to do that, and I'll apparate to you as soon as I can that day."

"Okay. I'll have to talk to Anju about it first, though."

"That's fine," Teafa said, a little quiet. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

* * *

 _ **March 8, 2005**_

Annabelle stood outside the prison, hands in her jacket pockets and her back to the wall.

When she saw the doors open, and she saw Petunia stepping out into the warm air and bright sun with a bag slung over a shoulder, she breathed a quick breath and ran a hand through her short-cut hair. Brushed her bangs out of her face. She pushed off from the wall and apparated right over to her aunt; Petunia startled, let out a yelp, and quickly backpedaled.

"Anna- Annabelle! You- you cut your hair," Petunia blurted, eyes traveling upward as she clutched at her chest. "It...it looks...nice."

"You mean it makes me look like a total tomboy dyke bitch?" Annabelle rattled out.

Petunia shook her head. "No, I mean it looks nice," she said, a bit firmly.

 _Well then, that's actually reassuring._ "Thanks. You ready to go?" Annabelle replied, holding out her metal arm.

"Y-yes."

Annabelle shook her hand a little, gesturing. "Then take it, and let's go." Petunia grasped her metal hand, stared down at it for a moment. Annabelle disapparated, taking her aunt with her.

They reappeared out in the grass on outskirts of the village. All around was the field, the forest stretching out. In the field was Norberta, settled down and snoozing.

Petunia swayed on her feet, turned a little paler, but she managed to keep her composure. "This is your home?" she spoke, looking it all over, all around. She had a smile on her lips. It was nothing but sincere, and kind, and warm - the kind of thing Annabelle had spent her whole childhood wishing to see directed at her yet never once had...

She was only getting it now, in her adult life. She wasn't sure how to feel about that.

"Yeah, this is home," Annabelle said simply, letting her aunt's hand go and starting off across the field for Norberta. Her aunt followed, slow and hesitant - even timid. _What an ironic role reversal_ , Annabelle thought. She stalked up to Norberta and gave her snout a light little _bop_. The dragon daughter woke, batted her eyes at her and stared at her. Lifted her head and stretched her long neck this way and that. She flexed her wings, flapped a bit, shifted on her feet and stood up proper. Her tail uncurled, stretched out behind her and flicked about like a cat's. Then she looked at Petunia, noticed her.

[This is her?] Norberta spoke lowly, as neutrally as she could.

[Yeah. Please remember what we all talked about: don't just start tearing into her, please. Sure, if she hasn't changed, if she insults you or does anything _inappropriate_ , then go for it - I'll probably beat you to it - but don't do anything unprovoked.]

[I know - I'll behave if she does.]

[Same thoughts here, Norberta, trust me.]

Norberta blinked. Dipped her head. [Okay.]

[Okay.] Annabelle switched back to English, turned back to her aunt. "Petunia, this is Norberta. She's my...sort of...unofficial, adopted daughter."

Petunia eyed Norberta with very real, raw fear and shock. She swallowed hard. "H-hello, Norberta?"

Norberta breathed a little puff of flames out her nostrils as she stared down at Petunia. Then- "Hello, Petunia Dursley."

Petunia stared. Then looked at Annabelle. "She...speaks english?"

"Yeah."

"A-all right. And...what you two were just...?"

"That was dragon talk. Her people's language. Pretty ancient, but it's infused with magic, and so it's sort of an immortal tongue thing. It's always the same, always going to be there. In recent years, it's taken a lot of researchers and a lot of study to find out how to...how to allow dragon kind to speak in english again; they used to be able to, a thousand years ago, but they lost that. And now their people have it again, so...it's all fine now."

"I...I see. That's...good."

"Yeah..." Annabelle smiled up at Norberta, took her head in hand and hugged her. Snuggled and kissed her a little. "It's nice to have options. And nice for her to be able to...have her own voice. Her own agency, her own- you know. She doesn't have to always have a translator, which got frustrating for her once she started dealing with humans on a regular basis. And a lot of them."

Petunia was quiet. Her eyes were roaming Norberta's massive, scaly form. Magnificence and beauty, reflective in sunlight. She blinked a little, shook her head. "I- I'm glad to...to meet you, Norberta."

"I can't say the same," Norberta responded, raising herself to her full height, stretching out her neck and spreading her massive wingspan. Shadows were cast on the immediate area. Sunlight refused to pass through her wings. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to say it, knowing even half of the things you did to my mother when she was young. I've seen her deal with the pain, and the memories, and I've seen her cry and scream and I've seen her act out in ways that _you taught her to - by example!_ You damaged her, you didn't just _hurt her_. You put sick things inside of her, like enduring curses that poison her, and she experiences those affects more than I like seeing in her. More than she ever likes seeing in herself. She wishes she was different, she's always trying so hard not to be _how_ _you made her!_ I can never...see all of that in her, and ever think about forgiving you for it."

"But..." Norberta flattened her wings at her sides with a sharp motion, nearly a blur, like a _snap_ of two fingers. A great rush of wind blew across the field, nearly toppled Annabelle and Petunia. Norberta slung her neck low, stretched out her head to put her face right in front of Petunia's. "My mother says I'm not allowed to eat you, or believe me, we wouldn't be having a conversation at all right now. But since we are, I'm going to give you a warning: if I see your hands anywhere _inappropriate_ on my mother, on her wife, on any of her _children_ , or on any of our friends tonight, I _will_ eat you alive and I will swallow you whole, and then a few hours after that I'll make you into the very literal embodiment of just what I think of you. Fortunately, my own child isn't around tonight to be in any danger," she concluded.

Petunia stood there, quivering and wide-eyed. She certainly drew back, took some large strides away, but she didn't _cower_. "I understand you - and I understand your feelings. You're perfectly fine to have them about me. I deserve them. And I promise you that I am not going to hurt anyone in this household."

Norberta pulled her head back, drew away. "Let's just see," she hissed with dragon fury.

"Right," Annabelle said briskly. "Let's go inside, and let's sit down. I'll get dinner started in about half an hour. We can do some more introductions later, too, once everyone starts showing up."

"All right..." Petunia, shaking, followed Annabelle over to the cabin door.

They entered the cabin together, and Annabelle led the way through the normal sized entry hall. Half way across the wooden flooring, the room shook and shifted. The ceiling shot up dozens of feet, the walls stretched out twice as far. The room was now as spacious as a football field.

Annabelle turned around with a smile, and watched Norberta enter the cabin as swiftly and delicately as a cat; the doorway, of course, had expanded as well. Norberta very comfortably stretched out to her full height, and let her wings flutter a little as she crossed to reach them again; behind her, the doorway shrunk down to its usual dimensions.

"What just- your house, it..." Petunia was at a total loss for words as she stared around herself. Shocked out of her mind. A part of Annabelle enjoyed seeing that. Petunia laid eyes on Norberta. "She...you...came inside too?"

Norberta revealed her long, sharp teeth. "I do that, yes. With permission from Anju, my mother hired some very talented mage architects to do this for me. It allows me to go _anywhere_ in this cabin that anyone else can go, and be _very_ comfortable about it."

"That's- that's- a-amazing," Petunia choked out, taking another look around. Her eyes went to the high ceiling in particular. She stretched up a hand, as if expecting it to be some illusion. Then she dropped her arm to her side, and looked at Annabelle. "I had no idea magic could do things like this. I...had thought it always was just...just..."

"Point a stick and make a bright light?" Annabelle suggested. She laughed. "Magic is so much more than that, Petunia. It can _do_ so much more."

"I...I can see that, now." Petunia gave a weak smile. "It's...fantastic."

"Yeah. Come on." Annabelle took two steps in the direction of the dining room - the flower-laden wood archway that acted as visual divider between the two zoomed forward and shrunk down, and four more steps brought her and Petunia into a normal old dining room with a long table and many chairs. They continued on through it into the living room. Norberta passed out of the entry hall and into the dining room behind them; the former room shrunk to normal size, while the latter, now occupied by her, grew to accommodate her size. The dining room resumed normal dimensions after, while the living room grew for Norberta as she entered it.

The bookshelves, TV, sofas and armchairs all drew closer, to meet in the middle of the room to compensate, and to retain their original positions, as well as their original positions in relation to one another.

Petunia stared out across the eighty foot expanse of carpet, her eyes going to the forty foot high walls of wood, and the flowers and hanging trinkets still on them. "It...doesn't look...it should have snapped in two?" She looked to Annabelle with shock, with doubt. "Wood...doesn't just stretch..."

"It's called _magic_ ," Annabelle replied, stressing the word. On her aunt's face, she didn't see any of the flinching or disgust she had always seen as a child on summer vacation from Hogwarts, when she'd mistakenly mentioned such _freakish_ things in her relative's presence.

"Yes, of- of course," Petunia said quickly, nodding. "I'm- sorry. I just never...saw much of it before...with Lily, our parents, and..." She fell silent. She dropped her head. Remorse. Shame? Her head came up again after a moment. She looked into Annabelle's eyes, with some determination. "You- you have a...w-wife?" she spoke, stumbling over the word but honestly seeming to _try_ not to. It was foreign to her, maybe even instinctively weird or disgusting, or whatever she thought about it...but _she was trying to not let it be._ Annabelle...could appreciate that. Her aunt _was_ different, she _was trying_. And that mattered. Because she'd certainly never even _tried_ to be anything decent to Annabelle as a child. "Is- is... _she_ around?"

"She's out flying with our kids - and Norberta's husband," Annabelle answered. She tried to smile. Sat down on the sofa and pulled her legs up and under herself. She lay an arm on the armrest to prop herself up. Steady. Support. "I usually join them - sometimes I use a broomstick, other times it's a magic carpet, and still other times it's this newly developed set of enchanted wings that are _unbelievably_ difficult to even control - but today I had other things to do, so I just had them go out without me. And Norberta just wanted a lazy day today, otherwise she'd have gone too."

"Oh." Petunia eyed an armchair, glanced at Annabelle. "May I sit down?"

"Sure."

"Thank you, Annabelle." Petunia settled into the chair, clasped her hands together on her knees. Looked at Annabelle. Looked at Norberta a few times; Norberta had settled herself down behind the couch, draped her long neck from over the back of it, and was resting her chin on Annabelle's feet. "Have you...heard from either Dudley or Vernon over the years?"

"No."

"Oh," Petunia said quietly. "I...I haven't heard from Dudley in...since the night I...and I haven't...heard from Vernon either, these past two years since his release. I hope Dudley's...turned out okay."

"Yeah, I hope so too," Annabelle agreed. She remembered what her cousin had been like as a kid. But he'd been just that: a kid. She didn't hate him or anything, not like she did her aunt and uncle. She just...actually sort of had no feelings about Dudley one way or the other. "So do you want anything to drink or eat?" Annabelle asked suddenly. She pushed Norberta's head off her legs and stood. "I have water, lemonade, tea - sugary stuff? What kind of food would you want?"

"Just water would be fine, thank you. And you don't need to go through any trouble to make anything to eat - I'm fine!"

"Okay." Annabelle apparated into her kitchen, flicked her wand; a cup floated over to the sink, which started to turn its own knobs and pour its own water. The cup, once full, disappeared into thin air with a second flick of her wand. Annabelle apparated back into the spacious living room, sat back down on the couch and faced her aunt.

Petunia's eyes were glued to the glass floating in front of her. Apprehension. Anxiety. She glanced at Annabelle, then reached out and took it. Took a small sip. Held it in her lap. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Total silence.

Annabelle enjoyed it. But...she also enjoyed a little background noise. She flicked a finger at the TV; it flickered to life - news channel.

"Do you...like to watch the news?" Petunia asked, in strained tones of false cheer.

"I don't _like to_ , but it's a necessity when it comes to my work in the world," Annabelle said. "And...just...uh, just some things I like to keep track of."

"What do you do for work?" said Petunia, in earnest interest.

"I help people," Annabelle replied. "When I can, where I can, I help people. I'm sort of an activist, and an advoca...advocate? Yeah. Also, sometimes a part-time emissary, too, for magical Britain's Ministry of Magic in relation to nonhuman governments and _sensitive situations_ , when I get called in for it. But I also work in a bookshop as an actual, paying job for the family - can't live off my parent's fortune forever. It was already getting low a few years back, so my wife and I realized we had to do something about it. I figured why not make it something to help fuel the family, _and_ be something I actually already like doing? I- uh, I like books," she finished lamely. Of course her aunt knew that already: she'd given her that book on arachnids as a child, the only real gift she'd ever gotten from her relatives.

"I see. And...your w-wife? Does s-she work?" Petunia asked quickly. She wanted to stay away from _that_ subject as much as Annabelle did.

Annabelle smiled. "Yeah. She works at a magic-specialized hospital, in a mage-founded city called Gwendolyn. Some of our friends live there, too, so it's nice. And what about you?" Annabelle inquired, looking past her aunt's shoulder. "You never had a job before, as far as I know - never worked a day in your life. You're going to have to get one now. And a house or something."

"Yes. The...magical prison- ah, rehabilitation center set me up with a few job possibilities, and a temporary housing situation to get me started."

"Good luck with that," Norberta snorted; little flames shot out her nostrils. "Oh, I know! Maybe you can get a nice, cozy little _cupboard_ _under some stairs_ to live in!"

Petunia's face flushed deep. She looked down at the floor.

[Hey.] Annabelle gave Norberta a little nudge in the face with her foot. [You said you were going to behave. She's behaving, so you behave too.]

Norberta looked at her out of the corner of a slitted eye. She opened her mouth wide, then closed it around Annabelle's whole foot. Annabelle sighed, and tugged her foot out of Norberta's jaws. She gave her a non too gentle kick in the face with a slobbery shoe. Norberta growled at her, and lifted her head high out of reach.

Annabelle sat up. Looked up at her. [Norberta, listen, if you can't do it, that's fine - I understand! - just go to some other room, or go back outside. I'll be fine on my own here. But we're not going to- to sit here and be cruel and petty, all right? That isn't right. That just...makes us as horrible as she was to me.]

[Fine.] Norberta stood. She flicked her tail sharply, cracked it on the floor with a sound like a whip. [I'll be outside. If you need me, be sure to yell, and I'll be _right there for you!_ I promise you, mother. Okay?]

[Thank you. I will. It'll be fine. You can come back in again when Anju and Emerich and the kids get back for dinner, all right?]

[All right. Just remember to yell if you need me, or if you just need to get away from her and you need me to watch her for you!]

[ _I will, Norberta._ I promise. Just - go. I can defend myself if I have to now, I'm not a kid anymore.]

Norberta gave a last, narrow-eyed look at Petunia, and then she left for the back door; the living room shrunk down to its normal state, with her departure, putting a solid wall behind the couch and bookshelves again.

Annabelle eyed her aunt. She breathed. She sat up straight. Looked past her aunt's shoulder as best she could. "Listen to me now, aunt Petunia. It's just us in the house now, so I'm going to tell you how tonight is going to go for you, along with some rules that you are _going_ to follow at all times, or else...or else you're going to be kicked out immediately, and you're not coming back. Ever. If you fuck this up, if you- I swear to god, that's _it_ for you. And depending on- on h-how _badly_ you fuck this up, on _what you do_ , you might even get hurt, and things will get more serious. Like, law enforcement serious. So I want- I want you to listen to me really, really damn carefully on this here, okay?"

"I understand you." Her aunt matched her pose, sitting up straighter. She gave her a serious, but sort of subdued look of attention. "I'm listening to you, Annabelle."

"Okay. All right. When my wife gets back..." Annabelle stopped. Her stomach rolled and burst. She swallowed. She looked away from her aunt. She clutched her wand tight in flesh fingers. Her metal fist closed at her side. She breathed. Breathed. Again. She gave the rubber band on her wrist a quick _snap_ against her skin. "I- when Anju gets back from flying with our kids, and once everyone gets here...we're going to do introductions. I'm going to tell you the names of my kids, you're going to get to see them for a minute, and I'm going to tell them who you are to me. To them. And that's it for them. I'm sending them to their rooms after. They'll be there all night, and they're going to eat back there, too."

Annabelle swallowed some more spontaneous spit that had welled up in her mouth, continued. "The hallway over there, that leads to their rooms, mine and Anju's room, and the bathroom. If you need to use the bathroom, you're going to ask someone, and they're going to take you down there and they're going to stand in front of the door the whole time. When you get out, they're going to walk you back to the kitchen, living room, or dining room. But you're _never_ going to be in that hallway alone, you hear me?"

"I understand," was all her aunt said. Very quiet, and in a very respectful tone.

"Okay. And- and if you want to go outside, get fresh air or something, someone's going out with you, too. There are things around here that you don't want to mess with - important stuff, cultural stuff. This whole village is...it's all Anju has left of her people. Don't break anything. Don't touch anything. Do you understand this? If you want to- to look at any of the totems, or carvings, or- you can look, but don't touch them."

Her aunt nodded. "I understand."

"Alright. And...yeah. Yeah, just- I get that this is going to be your first time around nonhuman people, but please try to not stare, or insult anybody, or be a speciesist piece of shit about it. I um, look, I won't lie and say that some of my friends aren't really...easy to get along with, but Anju and I are going to do our best to reign them in. Keep them on their best behavior here for you. So, there's that. Yeah."

"All right. I appreciate that, Annabelle. Thank you."

"Yeah." Annabelle drew breath and apparated to the kitchen. She fell against the counter, let out her long, shaking breath and jammed the cold faucet all the way around. She cupped her pale flesh hand and silver metal together, took the water up and threw it into her own face. She took another, let it splash down over her hair. She shut her eyes and braced herself there. Opened them up to look out the window; Norberta was sitting at attention only a few feet out the cabin. They made eye contact. Norberta started for the door with narrowed eyes and a set jaw - Annabelle shook her head at her quickly. Held up a hand and made a shoo-ing motion out the window.

Norberta hesitated. Looked at her a moment or two. Then she backed away and sat back down.

Annabelle ran a steadier hand up over her face and through her hair. She set her open palm on the counter and began to tap.

 _One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve...stimulation, stimulation, stimulation, give me stimulation..._

* * *

"Petunia, this is my wife, Anju, and these are our kids: Kafe, Ren, Tej, Shyri, and Aki and Jemma. Kids, this is...my aunt. Your grandaunt? Great aunt? Yeah. So, that's...yeah. She's _my_ mother's sister. And, um, aunt Petunia, here these are Gertrude and Teafa, Adelyn, and Confiance. And this is, of course, Emerich, Norberta's husband. Then we have Daphne and Maria, and last but not least, we have my friend Kyle."

"We still aren't friends," Kyle mumbled out, awkwardly shoving his hands in his pockets and dropping his gaze.

"Debatable," Annabelle retorted, sticking out her tongue. She long knew by now that Kyle's nature was just to be contrary; he'd gotten close to her years ago already, and didn't really mean it when he said things like that.

"It's nice to meet you, Petunia," Emerich spoke lowly, in pleasant tones. He bowed his midnight black, scaly head at Petunia. Blinked with slitted eyes of brilliant green.

[No it's not,] Norberta muttered.

Emerich looked at her. [Isn't it?]

[ _Yes, it is_ ,] Annabelle firmly interjected. _For now, anyway._ [Be nice, _please_.]

"It's nice to...meet you too," Petunia replied, in something of a daze. Her eyes swept around the room, taking in all the nonhumans.

"So you're the auntie I've heard so much about," Gertrude rasped. She hopped up onto a stool and scrutinized Petunia, up and down, from level height.

Petunia blinked. "Annabelle's told you about me?"

"Oh yeah. She lived with you when she was little. She said you were strict and distant." Gertrude flashed a grin. Brushed dark hair out of her eyes, peered ever more intently. "Bet I can break you of that."

"Gertrude..." Annabelle warned.

"What? I got Teafa out of her human-hating shell!" Gertrude exclaimed, pointing with frantic claws. "Why can't I have a go at getting your auntie out of her shell too?"

"Please," Petunia addressed Gertrude, flushing intensely. "I- it's- flattering, but I...am not interested in that sort of thing."

"You sure? If you want to come back to it later, I can-"

" _Gertrude, fucking shut up, for fuck's sake!_ " Annabelle burst out, slamming her fist on the counter. She breathed, hard. In and out. Counted to five - counted to ten. Drew another breath. Gripped the counter with an open hand. She looked around the kitchen, meeting all eyes in a grand sweep of gaze. Because all those eyes were on _her._ "Everyone here...when they agreed to come to this little party...agreed to _behave_. With each other, with everyone else here - and that includes Petunia. And she- she's not into...being propositioned or flirted with like that. She's, uh, the wrong person to do that with. She's never- she's not-"

"Everyone agreed to behave themselves _weeks ago_ ," Anju spoke up firmly, sweeping her gaze around to everyone in the kitchen. "No one's going to change their minds on that now, or they're not going to be welcome here for a while. So can we all have some dignity and respect for each other while we're here please?" She gave Gertrude a sharp look.

"Oh, fine," Gertrude pouted, crossing her arms.

"I'm right with you," Confiance murmured, fluttering over to land on Gertrude's shoulder. She huffed, set her elbows on her knees and rested her head in her hands. "I was told this was a party! This is going to be so boring."

"We're going to behave ourselves," Teafa said, in level tones. She set a slender hand on Gertrude's arm. "As much as we might not want to around _people_ like this one," she added, with a disgusted look at Petunia, that had the latter woman ducking her head and flushing crimson.

"I hate to agree with the resident racist," Adelyn sighed, shaking her head. "but she's right." She gave Gertrude a sharp, scarlet-eyed look. "You're going to have to behave yourself tonight - just for one night. You can do that, can't you? For Annabelle's sake?"

"I guess I can," Gertrude said heavily. She lifted an absent hand and brushed Confiance off her; the fairy woman swore and righted herself in the air after a short tumble. She looked at Anju, then at Annabelle. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Anju said kindly. "Just keep it together for one evening, and we'll be okay. Adelyn, why don't you take Gertrude and Confiance to the living room? The TV is running, and anyone can feel free to watch whatever they like. There are snacks set out, too, and refreshments."

"Come on," Adelyn spoke, grabbing Gertrude's arm and dragging her off the stool. Gertrude tore her arm out of her grasp and kicked her, then started off for the living room. Confiance hesitated, stuck her tongue out at Anju, then fluttered off after them. Teafa gave a more heartfelt apology to Anju, and followed her girlfriend quickly.

Daphne and Maria traded quiet murmurs, the latter squeezed the other's arm, and they both walked out the back door of the cabin. Shortly after, Kyle followed them out, keeping his head down.

"Right." Annabelle turned to her children. "Kids: go to your rooms, please. Have fun, watch TV, draw, read, do some barrel rolls and air laps around your rooms, practice your magic - whatever. Just go there and try to stay there until it's time for dinner; Anju or I will bring you all your meals then. Oh, and don't start shit with each other, _please!_ I don't want to have to come back there for that!" The boys left first. Then the girls. Floated off down the long side hallway. Annabelle watched Aki immediately surge forward and tackle Tej, and the pair began floating and banging around with feathers and laughs and loud shrieks of mirth. At least it was playful this time. _God knows how long that's going to last, though._ She shook her head at them and looked to Adelyn. Leaned against the counter. Ran a hand through her short hair. "Sorry about all this. How've you been? It's...been a while."

"Oh, I've been just fine, thank you for asking." Adelyn strode forward and swept her into a sudden hug. She drew away. "The loss of my son is still here, it's still hurting, but I do still have my daughter, and I have a lot left to still be here for."

"Speaking of which...where's she at?"

Adelyn grinned. "Oh, she's with her boyfriend again."

"Uh-huh." Annabelle grinned, too. "Are you expecting to be a grandmother anytime soon?"

"I'd never have expected to even still be a _mother_ at this stage of things," Adelyn replied. "But here I am, so..." She spread her arms. "I suppose we'll just have to wait and see."

"Yeah. Guess so."

"Can we all move to the sitting room?" Anju spoke up. She gestured at the stovetop and flames. "Dinner's well on its way, but I'd like to just be there to keep an eye on our more...uppity guests." She sighed, gave Annabelle a look. "I'm sorry, sweetie, I do love them, but I'd also love for them to learn to be a little better about managing themselves in my house. It's been six years, and Gertrude's only _slightly_ improved on her manners and her general sense of _appropriateness_."

"I know," Annabelle sighed. "I wish she'd be a little faster at bettering herself, too. It's not all too acceptable. Not after six years of it. If she gets too bad about it tonight, I'll just tell her to leave, okay? Right? We talked about this, yeah. I mean, how she acts is fine if it's just the two of us, or if it's us hanging out together on any average day...but this is like- you know, all formal and special, so she really shouldn't be acting like this..."

"I'm sorry," Petunia said quietly. "People here are angry with me. That's fine, that's expected, and I deserve every bit of it after all I did to you as a child. I shouldn't even be here, Annabelle. I'm ruining your evening."

"Maybe," said Annabelle. "But, on the other hand, you being here or not, Gertrude's just being a little asshole tonight for some reason. I don't know if she had a bad gig earlier, or if someone else put her in a bad mood, but...she's being a bit more foul than usual. And that isn't okay of her, no matter what else."

"Let's go, please," Anju spoke again. She floated off across the room. Everyone else followed her, out through the dining room and into the living room.

"Confiance, don't touch any of my kids' shit," Annabelle snapped out immediately.

"I was just wondering what it was for!" Confiance quickly fluttered back from a bowl of powder on a high bookshelf with her hands raised.

"It's medicine - Aki has a misaligned wing, she needs it for the pain on longer flights," Annabelle said shortly.

"Got it! I won't take any of it - not even a little grain! Not this fairy lady, no ma'am, not- hey you're actually pretty when you're up close."

Petunia reared back as Confiance shot right for her face, hovered in front of her. "E-excuse me?"

Annabelle growled her frustration. "Just ignore her, she just loves screwing with people - just sit down, _please. Confiance, she's not interested, find something to do. Gertrude, the point of a TV isn't to sit an inch in front of it: you'll burn your eyes out._ "

Confiance listened to her, thank god (as did Gertrude; she very quickly shuffled back on the carpet, putting her back to the sofa). Everyone else found ways to occupy themselves, too - and each other. Some idle chatter was had, some laughs, some jokes (and through it all, Petunia stayed off on her own).

Then, dinner was prepared, all set out. Everyone was retrieved, and herded over into the dining room. The dining table stretched out several dozen long meters in an instant to accommodate them all.

"So...everyone's seated," Anju spoke; her normal tones reached everyone as if they were still seated shoulder to shoulder with one another. "We took note of and acquired what everyone wanted - or needed, in some cases - so everyone should feel free to enjoy themselves here."

"Bloody meat," Gertrude cried, starting to take the large slab of steak in hand. She stopped. Gave a glance at Anju; she made a big show of taking up her fork and knife, and then _properly_ utilizing them.

"Bloody meat," Norberta agreed with satisfaction, dipping her long neck to the table's surface to bite into a magically enlarged steak.

"This is _very_ good," Emerich told Anju, after tearing into and swallowing half his giant steak whole.

"Thank you," Anju replied, smiling at him.

"Bloody meat _and_ pure blood? Oh, you didn't have to go through the trouble," said Adelyn, gratitude glinting in her scarlet eyes. She took up a glass of dark red, held it daintily in hand, and gave it a long sip of savoring.

"Pretty sure we did," Annabelle responded with a smile. "You're our friend."

"Well." Adelyn raised her glass, flashed a smile in return.

"I wanted to go swimming," Confiance said, with a mournful look at her appropriately proportional dishes. The Jell-O bowl in particular.

"We know - maybe later," Annabelle replied, stifling a giggle. Confiance, of course, didn't mean simple swimming: she meant skinny dipping.

Everyone dug in, in silence and a pleasant little atmosphere. Until it was broken.

"Are you some kind of vampire?"

All eyes went to Petunia. Some of them were shocked, some of them were amused, and some were looking offended by proxy.

"Yes," Adelyn said absently, setting her glass down. She plucked a knife off the table and twirled it between her fingers, then set to work cutting up a very _rare_ slice of meat. She fixed her scarlet eyes on Petunia's staring face. "I imagine this is your first time ever meeting one of my kind?"

"It is," Petunia confirmed, slow and quiet. "Why do you drink b-blood if you can eat _normal food_ just fine?" She gestured to the rare steak.

"Well, the thing about that is: I can't," Adelyn said patiently. "Oh, I can bite it, I can chew it up, swallow it, digest it...but it does nothing for me. When I eat _normal food_ , as you put it, I can never taste it, and it will never provide my body with any sort of nutrients. Only blood can do that for me now. Although, as with this steak here, if blood is mixed in with my foods I _can_ get a flavor out of it again. But that comes from the blood, not the food itself. If I mix blood with meat, or blood with, say, sugary cookies or fruits, it will give me all sorts of different flavors for each. But food on its own? Nothing."

"I...see. And...you don't drink people's blood, do you?"

Adelyn smiled in a way that showed she wasn't offended. "With someone's consent, proper screening for magical diseases, and a slow process where we keep an eye on the amount taken - as well as _how it's taken_ \- yes, I sometimes do."

"I-"

"I know, you were going off of the nonmagic tales of vampires who feast on the unwilling in their beds at night, or those who jump on people in dark alleys and drag them away," Adelyn interrupted, waving a hand of blue-painted nails. "I won't fault you for that: it is, of course, the only thing you've ever _known_ about vampires until recently. There's no insult in ignorance, only if you _remain_ ignorant. Although," she continued, a frown taking over her face. "I won't lie and say those tales didn't come from somewhere. There _are_ plenty of vampires out there who live a life of assault and violation of others for their own survival or just their satisfaction - the most famous one of them all being dear Alucard."

"Alu...Dracula?" Petunia stared. "He was...he was real?"

"He _was_ real, yes," said Adelyn. Her frown grew deeper. "A foul but powerful man, he was - and even more so as a vampire. He made his living with wanton abductions and slaughter. He would round up towns and villages, capture them in his hypnotic thrall, and then feast on dozens and hundreds in the streets, all night long. And if there were any left after he was done gorging himself, he'd abscond with them to his great castle, and place them all into a sleeping state on the lower levels. He'd keep dozens upon dozens of them like this, feasting on one until they were bled dry and dead, and then moving on to another. He always kept a good, constant supply for himself. Hence why he lived so long."

"But he's- he's dead now, yes?" Petunia stammered, pale-faced.

"Oh, yes." Adelyn grinned. "With the rise of modern civilization, magical government law enforcement and military forces were sent after him in _droves,_ and they did manage to overwhelm him - and kill him at last. Though, his bloodline does survive," she added, with a bit of a shrug. "The Daughter of Dracula, I think she's known as to the world at large. No idea where she is or what she's been doing - no one does; she's really a sort of myth among vampires, honestly - but I'd like to hope she's been living a good, solitary life that's been nothing like her father's."

"Well, I- I'm glad that he - she - isn't a p-problem. And I'm glad to hear that you aren't, either," Petunia finished, in a rush.

Adelyn's frown returned for a brief moment. Then she shrugged; she threw her head back and downed the rest of her drink. "Most people are," she replied. She turned to her right and immediately began engaging Norberta in conversation.

"Hey, isn't it a little funny how your scientists are still all freaked out about everything?" Confiance directed at Petunia conversationally, jumping on the opportunity like she'd been waiting for it.

"I- I don't understand what you mean..." Petunia said cautiously, like she didn't trust herself to speak at all. At least she seemed to realize she'd said something wrong to Adelyn, Annabelle thought.

Confiance gestured at the secondary dining room television set, where an informal panel of people were in a deep discussion about magic, souls and bodies. "You thought it was the brain that held a person! Consciousness! You thought _brains_ made sapience possible. Now you know it doesn't, and you're all freaking out over it! It's funny to watch."

"F-from the- perspective of...someone who already knew that wasn't true...I suppose it could be funny," Petunia allowed, quiet and halting.

"It's hilarious!" Confiance crowed, doubling over in her minuscule chair. "You've all been so- so _confused and frustrated_ about, oh, _how can your brains let us talk, how do we think, why can't 'animals' think like we can? Oh, evolution, oh genetics!_ Haha. No, no, no, and _nope!_ You've all been so stumped by little tiny spiders being as intelligent and emotionally capable as yourselves because you keep trying to think in terms of _brains!_ But guess what? The brain has limits, the brain is just a fleshy thing! Of course it can't hold a whole sapient being! But souls? Souls are intangible, they're probably bigger on the inside than the outside or something! They don't have limits to what they can do, or the information they can hold! It doesn't matter what the size of the body or brain is, because the _soul_ can fit into _any_ body size and still be what it is! A person, a consciousness! They're where and what a person really is, and the body and the brain are just vehicles to hop in and out of! The soul goes to the afterlife, the soul stays back as a ghost, the soul can survive outside the body in a few different ways and get into another if it wanted to! Souls, souls, souls - not brains, brains, brains!"

"I...see."

"A lot of your scientists are still crazy about it, because they just can't accept that souls exist!"

"A lot of people can't accept that souls exist," Annabelle interjected, hoping to avoid any further _spirals_ of conversation, ala Adelyn. "And it makes sense. The majority of the billions of people in this world have grown up in a world where souls are nothing but myth and legend and imaginary concepts. Now they have to come to grips with the fact that they're very real, and always have been." She paused. "And the whole confirmed afterlife thing - pretty sure that rocked the world more than any of this sapient nonhuman, soul-to-body-size revelation stuff. Most people seem to be getting a good handle on _that stuff_ , and plain magic itself being a thing. But the afterlife? Ghosts? That's really done a number on a lot of people."

"Some of it good, some of it bad, of course," Adelyn spoke up casually. She waved an airy hand about. "For some people it just doesn't compute, while for others it's given them a brand new perspective on life itself. I've seen a wide range of reactions in my travels."

"Regardless of any of it though, yeah, people are going to be up in arms about all of it for a long time to come," said Annabelle. "It's totally upended philosophy, religion, and even moral and ethical viewpoints for a lot of people. Not to mention laws..."

"What do you mean by that?" said Emerich, voice full of innocent curiosity. "Philosophy, ethical viewpoints? How has that changed because of this information?" he went on to clarify.

"Can we not get started on that rabbit hole?" Norberta whined, flicking her tail out to lightly smack Emerich's hind leg.

It was too late for that; the entire table soon participated in diving into that hole, which led to a long, complicated series of discussions over the next hour and a half.

"Can I marry you? You'd become the _twi tume_ of my kingdom if you said yes," Confiance was saying to Petunia, at the tail end of the table's great philosophical discussions. "I've never had an outsider be one before, never heard of it either - but there aren't any laws against it. So it could happen!"

"I- I don't- think that would work out between us..." Petunia said, pale and wide-eyed.

"Your loss," Confiance snickered. "I offered you a kingdom, and you threw it in my face. I'll remember that. _You'll_ remember that when I get a hold of some shrinking potions!"

"Is she telling the truth?" Petunia asked, glancing at Annabelle with a hint of fear. "Could she really...do that to me?"

Gertrude spoke before Annabelle could. "Your _Alice In Wonderland_ fable is based on a true story - Alice was a lost little witch in the woods, who lived about a century and a half ago. What does that tell you?"

"Magic _can_ shrink people," Annabelle informed Petunia. "But it's a rare thing. Rare potions, rare ingredients, rare flowers - or rare spells and rituals from nonhuman mage types. But it's all rare enough you'd never have to worry about it. Not unless someone was really determined..."

"Oh, I'm determined," Confiance giggled.

"She's not _really_ a queen of any kingdom," Teafa informed Petunia airily. "She's a lowly thief, and a liar, and-"

"Excuse you? Pot calling the kettle black?" Daphne snorted, glaring at Teafa with glistening pure black eyes. Her echoing, magical voice was full of contempt. "You're a racist singer profiting off the same people she hates, whining about how _humans are so bad, they hurt my people,_ but you don't hesitate to walk into the largest magical city in magical america and-"

"I don't _hate_ humans, I'm scared of them," Teafa responded, turning her chin up at Daphne. "And why shouldn't I be? They torture, rape, kidnap, and burn villages to the ground just because they can. They did all that to me, personally, and nowadays I've learned that on a larger scale they have things like missiles and _nukes_ \- and they haven't hesitated to use them! I've been reading about their effects on people. Do you know how horrible it is, how disgusting, how depraved, how..."

 _Spiraling,_ Annabelle thought, discomfort flooding through her body. She gripped the edge of the table hard.

"I- I suppose- s-someday I might be happy to...tour your kingdom?" Petunia carefully stammered out, loudly over Daphne and Teafa. Deliberately so. "But I wouldn't like to be shrunk down without my consent."

"Since when does consent matter to you?" Annabelle snarled, jumping to her feet. Silence fell over the table. Everyone was looking at her. Annabelle felt a familiar texture against her palm; she looked down to find her wand in her grasp. _When did I do that?_ She looked in her aunt's general direction. Her face was heating up, and her stomach was squirming. Her legs were jelly as she collapsed onto her chair and hunkered down in it. "I'm sorry! Aunt Petunia, I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to, please, I'm so sorry, I'll n-never do anything like that again!"

"It's fine!" Petunia said quickly, reassuring. Smiling. "Don't worry, Annabelle! It's all right. You're fine! Please, don't worry yourself. It's fine."

Anju lifted her arm and touched her feathered hand to Annabelle's cheek. Annabelle froze - appreciated the breeze of motion, and the coolness of the feathers. "Do you want us to go to the bedroom for a while?" she said simply, softly.

"I...yeah," Annabelle choked out. "Yeah. Sorry, sorry - bye." She apparated away, reappearing in her bedroom. Hers and Anju's. She flicked her wand shakily at the fireplace; flames and warmth and light sprung to life. She settled onto the bed, curled into the blankets.

Anju quickly came floating into the room from the hallway - the door shut with a magical breeze and a sweep of her wing. She hovered onto the bed, lay herself down and pressed up against Annabelle.

Silence. Quiet. Warmth.

Anju wrapped a wing around Annabelle, shifted even closer to her, gave her a kiss on the back of the head. Talked to her, told her things were fine, told her she was okay, told her...that nothing she said or did tonight was going to get her hurt, that it wasn't bad, that she wasn't bad, and told her that her aunt could never lay a hand on her again. Reminded her that...that it was different now, she was different, and her aunt was different, and reminded her that, too, what she was feeling now was...

Minutes passed them by like this, until Annabelle came back to herself. Stopped her violent shaking, her sniffling and her hiccups. She turned over to face Anju, ran her fingers along the inside of her wings, carefully and absently rustling the feathers. She pressed her nose into it all and sniffed, loved that earthy smell and Anju's natural scent, combined. She smiled; Anju smiled at her, too - she'd always allowed her to do this, and she'd even commented on it being "cute" and other such things. With that scent in her, Annabelle quickly grew ever calmer, until it was completely so: it was so comforting, relaxing, always.

Smell, touch...they always helped Annabelle. Sensory comforts. Almighty stimulation.

"How're you feeling?" Anju spoke quietly, eventually.

"Good," Annabelle mumbled. "I'm good again. I'm- I'm good. We uh, we should get back to everyone..."

"If you feel like you want to - I'm sure _everyone_ would understand if you weren't up to it anymore," Anju whispered, kissing her cheek gently.

"I'm- I'm up to it. I am, really - promise. Adelyn, Gertrude, Confiance...I haven't seen them all in a while. I don't want to be a shitty host by asking them all here and then not, you know, being their host. They all had busy lives they had to arrange this invitation around."

"Okay." Anju's wing lifted away, exposing cooler airs onto Annabelle's skin. Sweat dripped down Annabelle as she rolled away and got up off the bed. Anju sat up, stood up.

"Okay." Annabelle smiled. Breathed. Let it out. She led the way out into the hall, back to the dining room. Nobody was moved from where they'd been. Though, Kyle was missing entirely, and Daphne and Maria's voices could be heard elsewhere in the sitting room. And...

"So you're a nationalist?" Petunia was saying, strained and quiet, to Confiance.

Confiance's voice floated back across the table in tones of light laughter. "Oh no! No. According to your definitions, I'd be a _patriot_. Patriotism is striving to make your home better by holding it to the standards it claims to aspire to. A patriot sees flaws in their country and aspires to _do better_. A nationalist believes the opposite. Their country is already the best thing ever, and to even _suggest_ it could be improved upon in some manner is traitorous. And if there is a problem, its not the nation's fault, it's the _undesirables_ leeching her lifeblood. I know my kingdom has problems, but I have hope that it can get over them."

"That's...such a positive attitude. I- admire you for that."

"Well thanks, sweetheart."

A pink-faced Petunia looked away.

"Uhm," Annabelle started, shifting on her feet. Wringing her hands at her waist. "I uh- sorry, everyone. I didn't mean to...I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Norberta spoke first, kind and firm. [She deserved that shot.]

[No, she didn't,] Emerich spoke up.

Norberta huffed flames out her nose, turned to glare at Annabelle. [I hate you for instilling a sense of morality in my partner. Things are so much more _boring_ now.]

[Sorry.] Annabelle shrugged, laughed a little. She took her seat again, looked up and down the table. Anju joined her in it, touched a wing to her for a moment and gave her another of her smiles. "So, uhm...how was everyone's meals?" she said pointedly, gesturing at the empty, or partially empty plates and bowls.

Cue everyone appropriately gushing and complimenting on the food.

"Great," Annabelle said. Nodded. "That's great. Uh, also, does anybody know where Kyle went?"

* * *

Annabelle stomped heavily into the small, outer village cabin. She knocked her fist on the wall. "Hey."

"Hey." Kyle didn't look at her. He was staring into his lap. Had his hands together.

Annabelle smiled. Gestured at the dusty bedding. "Can I sit with you?"

"Sure."

She did. Annabelle palmed her paperclip of the week and slid it into her mouth. Gnawed at it furiously for a moment or two. "So, where've you been? It's been like a year, I haven't seen you. Also, more recently, you know, why'd you bail out on the dinner party?"

"Long disappearances tend to be the case when you're running from a death cult."

"Yeah, but...you could always stay here. Plenty of houses to take up residence in. Anju doesn't mind - she loves it, actually. Sort of wants to rebuild her community, replace the old one with a newer one."

A sigh. "I'll think about it. But I need to go now. I promised to meet someone else, and I'm not contributing much to this party of yours."

"Natasha?" Silence. "Why're you still stalking that girl?"

"Why are you still stalking that boy?"

"His name is Joseph. And, because I murdered his mother. You're stalking your kid because you saved her life in a hospital once and got her a nice new home."

Kyle lifted his head, met her eyes. He smiled just slightly. "Not too different. We're both still stalking them."

"Well...hey, want to just both stop? It's feeling kind of creepy at this point."

"I'll stop when she's eighteen."

"When you know she'll be safe, out of the house and able to defend herself." Annabelle nodded. "All right. Yeah. That's- great."

"What about you?"

Annabelle scratched at her head, threaded fingers through her short-cut hair. "I uh- I'm just, you know, waiting for him to grow up a bit more so I can actually...tell him. Sit down and talk, you know? He deserves to know, but he has to be capable of really understanding it all first. A six year old can't really...get it yet."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Soooo, you sure you don't just want to stick around?"

Another sigh. Kyle looked at the floor. "We're not a good combination."

"No, we're not," Annabelle agreed. "Not really. But, if you were to take a house here, you wouldn't be really _around me_ , you know? You'd just happen to be living nearby. You could pick this one, for example! On the furthest, absolute edge of the village. I wouldn't get in your business, you wouldn't get in mine. Nobody would come over and bug you, and you wouldn't even have to ever see me or Anju or Norberta up and about, as long as we came and went at different times."

"Fine. But you stay away from me unless it's something important. Please."

"All right, I promise," said Annabelle.

"And...thank you." Kyle...he _almost_ smiled at her again. "For that, and for this party invitation. It's really cool. I've never met so many nonhumans before."

"Yeah, it's great, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

Silence between them.

"So," Annabelle started, shifting on the bed. "Want to get back to the party?"

* * *

"Maria-"

"I HAVE TO GO, I CAN'T BE HERE, PLEASE!"

Daphne grabbed Maria's arm and dragged her in close. "Maria, come on, we're all fine here, we're all safe here! And we talked about this before: you don't really want to-"

"Yes I do! You're going to die, she's going to die, and everyone's going to die! Everyone's _dead_ if we don't go back! She already- we have to go, I- I need her, I need to-"

"Maria, shut up and drink this!" Daphne wrapped Maria up tight and pulled her to the floor. Struggled to get a vial to her lips. "Stop - hitting - me!"

"Nobody's safe here! Daphne, get off of me, let me go, we have to go, we can't-"

Daphne poked her in the stomach, and muttered a quick word. The next ten seconds she kept holding onto Maria, kept talking to her, until Maria stopped fighting her, and her black eyes closed and she went limp in her arms.

"Sorry. Sorry- everybody. I didn't think she'd have a freakout like this tonight..."

"It's alright," Anju said softly, getting down and brushing a wing over Maria's pale face. "No one's upset, it's all right. Just tell us what she needs. Does she need to get back to your apartment?"

"Yeah. We should go." Daphne stood, lifted maria up and held her in her arms like a bride on wedding day. "Sorry - sorry - sorry," she murmured out as she passed everyone, heading for the back door. "Didn't mean to ruin the atmosphere."

"Nothing's ruined," Annabelle spoke firmly, grabbing Daphne's arm as she passed. She looked up, looked her in eye. She smiled. "You're fine, okay? We had a great time, and I liked seeing you again. And Maria."

"Yeah. Fine, see you around," Daphne snorted. She shook her head. Stared down at Annabelle a moment, her face twisted. "We're a damn mess." She walked on by.

With Daphne and Maria's departure, the dinner party slowly winded down. Norberta and Emerich were next to leave, about an hour later. Then, Annabelle discovered Kyle had left after she went back to check on his newly rented cabin (after a talk about it with Anju, that was). Gertrude and Teafa were next to go, with the latter reluctantly admitting she'd had a good time in the presence of humans. After them, Confiance fluttered out the nearest window and disappeared into the woods (but not before blowing a kiss Petunia's way). Second last to leave should have been Adelyn, though...

"You don't have anywhere else to be tonight?" said Annabelle, on entering the sitting room to find Adelyn slumped in an armchair. She frowned. "Adelyn...? Hey!"

"Wha- what?" Adelyn startled violently and sat up straight in her armchair. "Oh...hello. Yes, I..." Her scarlet eyes shone with cheerfulness - yet there was something else there that Annabelle noted...

"Are you hurt or something? You looked-"

"No, no: I was sleeping."

Annabelle sat down on the sofa, turned toward Adelyn. "Sleeping? I thought you couldn't do that. Like, ever?"

"True, and not even Stunning spells or average sleeping potions would do the job for a vampire - but, in these past six years there's been a wonderful blend of magic and biology to create new areas of research, which have produced a brand new line of potions that actually _can_ trigger the stages of sleep in a vampire's brain. Including the ability to dream again." Adelyn lifted a small notebook off her lap and held it up for Annabelle to see. " _This_ is for me to keep track of them. Write them down, get all the details." She sighed in a wondrous, heavenly way. "In a thousand years of living, I'd entirely forgotten what it actually felt like to fall asleep, to dream, to wake up all groggy and grumpy. Never been able to do it again, since being turned: until these past few months now."

"That's great."

"Yes. These past few years since I met you, my life has turned around in a way I never thought it could. I've felt more human again in recent years than I ever have, and I can never thank you enough for that."

"Well, uh, you're welcome. Glad I could help."

Adelyn smiled at her in a most beautiful way.

"So you're not a morning person?" Annabelle said, filling the silence. She glanced down at her arm and snapped her rubber band against her skin in idle. She smiled at the little sting.

"I wasn't," Adelyn answered, shaking her head. "I think that's changed now, though."

"Huh."

"Where's your aunt?" Adelyn asked casually.

"Outside with Anju." Annabelle snapped her rubber band a little harder. "She wanted to know more about the- culture and history and stuff, so Anju's giving her a nice tour."

"That's nice."

"Yeah. It is."

"You're doing very well tonight, Annabelle. I've spent ninety-eight percent of my life, up until recently, running from all my problems. Hiding from them all." Adelyn gave her dream journal a gentle, loving caress. "I've met and been...involved with...people like your aunt before. And...well, people a whole lot worse. Not that I'm comparing terrible people, or traumas. I just...I've just stayed away, waited for them all to die before I ever chose to go back anywhere near where they'd once been. But here you are, and you've invited her into your home, you've laid down the law to her, you're...amazing, and strong, and so much better of a person than I ever have been."

"Thanks," Annabelle whispered. "I'm just trying to be better than _her_. That's all, really. I mean, I'm not some superhero, or some angel or whatever, you know? I just don't want to be _her_ , as much as I can...not be her."

"You're doing very well with that."

"Thanks," Annabelle repeated. She breathed. "I'm glad to have you over. Um, since you're sleeping again, do you want to sleep here? I could transfigure the sofa into an actual bed for you..."

Adelyn giggled. "Oh, I'd love that. A sleepover, the modern english refers to it as, yes?"

"Yeah." Annabelle laughed. "We'll have a sleepover. You can portkey away in the morning."

"That sounds fantastic. Thank you."

* * *

 _ **March 28, 2005 - Mountains, Northern USA**_

Annabelle appeared on the mountain with a little _pop_.

An array of dragons, all shapes and sizes and colors, were laying about the dirt.

At the head of them all, was Norberta. Pacing back and forth absently, and talking. Addressing them all.

[These scrolls are recountings of Aldren, a rare dragon from back in the day - just over a thousand years ago - who spent his time living up in these very mountains, meeting with nondragon individuals who wanted his advice, guidance, and assistance due to his long life of over eight hundred years at the time. He was one of the most knowledgeable and talented of our kind when it came to our brand of dragon magics - when he died, he took all of that with him, so most of what I could teach you to do here won't be anything too big or amazing. My efforts to collect surviving information about our magic hasn't really yielded much more than bits and pieces, sadly; human mage societies in the past thousand years have taken a lot of time to either erase that knowledge, or hoard it in museums and private collections.] Norberta huffed flames. [And even more sadly, not many of them have been too willing to hand it over to me because of ownership rights and other legal things that I hate to bore you all with.]

Norberta flicked her tail and stretched her neck out. Yawned. [Anyway, getting back to Aldren. More than being a dragon magic expert, though, he was a credit to dragons everywhere in the moral and ethical realms, and he's one of the best examples we have of what _we_ ought to be today. He was _way_ ahead of his time, and ostracized because of it by most of our people back in those days.]

[So you'd like us to all just sit around listening to endless complaints and whining from humans, orcs, house elves and who knows what else, for our entire lives? _That's_ what you want our lives to be?] A dragon inquired. Female, on the smaller side, sleek and dark green. Venomous fangs _and_ venomous pointed tail.

[No, Loapeoth, I'm not saying that. Not exactly, anyway!] Norberta said quickly. [The point is...the point is...that we need empathy! We need...cooperation! We need to know how to do that, like Aldren: how to work with other species, how to understand them and care about them. We can't just hold ourselves all high and mighty, as the sky-soaring, flame-breathing lords and ladies of the world just because we're bigger, or faster, or...or can do some real damage to towns and cities on our own. None of that makes us _better_. It never did in the past, and it won't now. It doesn't _give us the right_ to do whatever we want, to whoever we want.]

[Why?]

[Why what?]

[Why _doesn't it_ all give us the right to do that? The humans committed...what's that word...genocide? Or is it sterilization? Both words, actually. They did that to us, and it's stayed with us for a thousand years, until now here we are and _our children are still suffering from it!_ I've tried having three kids before, and all of them turned out to be...nothing but mere animals. Beasts. Like I used to be, myself. I remember those years, growing up. I recall every detail of those cages, and the way those _humans_ would tear off my claws, bind my wings to my sides, put a weight on each of my limbs, and a metal wrapping around my face so I couldn't even open my mouth. I remember every single time that they flashed those magic lights at me, made me feel like crying out with the pain - but that _metal muzzle_ prevented me from doing that. All of this was done to us - to me, personally - and some of that is still happening to our children even as we speak! So why...why shouldn't we go and hurt them back for it? Why are we supposed to get along with them, talk to them, understand them?]

[Because it isn't right,] Norberta said simply.

[Self-defense. Defense of others. It _can_ be right, but you don't seem to want to let it!] Loapeoth argued fiercely. [Why should they get to hurt us like that, hurt our children, cripple our entire civilization, and _get away with it?_ Why should we _let them get away with it? Why are we just sitting around like this on a mountain?_!]

[They shouldn't get away with it,] Norberta answered, quiet and steady. [They won't. When we actually form a new society, we're going to get restitution and- and reparations from them over it all! I have big plans for that, trust me. They won't just get to ignore what they've done to us, and to our kids. I'm going to make sure of it - but it's going to take some time to get that ball rolling. And...anyway, look Loa, not letting them get away with what they did _doesn't_ mean going out and razing entire cities or eating them alive. It means that we...right now, we can bring charges against specific human individuals, we can get justice in courts, in the laws about abuse and kidnapping and all that stuff. But it doesn't mean going out and slaughtering people - especially not people who had nothing to do with it.]

Loapeoth paused. Narrowed her eyes. Her tail swished about as she rose to her feet. [Then why aren't we doing _that_?]

Norberta got up, too. Took two steps forward. [We are!] she spoke firmly. [A lot of us are. Some dragons out there have gotten legal representatives among certain human societies, and there are some cases going through the systems - several of them have even been won. Easily! The humans who did those things, they were locked up for it, taken out of their homes and lives for it. That's enough for us. It should be enough for you.]

[Should it?]

[Yes!]

[Why?]

[What do you mean, _WHY_?!] Norberta said shrilly, disbelief and exasperation dueling in her voice for dominance.

[What if I don't feel satisfied by that outcome? What if I'd feel better about it if I could go and eat them?] Loapeoth spoke slowly, drawing out her words as if she were speaking to a _slow_ dragon. [Those _specific humans_ \- not anyone "innocent" like you don't want me to - who did those things to us, and to me, and to my children? To _your child!_ ]

Norberta snorted flames. [Well, then tough shit, Loa: that's what laws are _for._ They hold us back from just giving in to those feelings, those thoughts, and becoming mindless, idiotic monsters and mobs. The very same _animals and beasts_ you're so pissed off about once having been made into! They ensure fairness, and justice, and truth. Going out murdering people won't do that.] Norberta paused. [You could have burned and eaten some humans in your actual escape from the cages, and the weights, and the muzzle - I'll bet you _did_ \- and _that_ is when it would have been justified...but it wouldn't be justified _now_. You're way past that point - sorry.]

[What if I don't care?] Loapeoth hissed, enraged. [Why should they get to burn us, to lock us up, to make us scream and weigh us down and make our children practically _stillborn_ for all the use we can get out of them, and we don't get to do anything to them except...except _legal things_ , _like_ _restitution, and reparations, whatever those all are?!_ ]

[Because we want to be good people,] Norberta growled. She stomped forward and stood tall over Loapeoth, spreading her wings and stretching out on her legs and with her neck. [If you want to be a shit person, if _that's_ what you want to do with your newfound sapience, then you're just going to end up back in a cage again for it until you can learn to behave like any civilized person. Do you understand me, Loa?]

[Yes...] Loapeoth said stiffly. She dug the claws of her right foreleg into the dirt, several inches deep. She ducked her head, and her body sagged wholesale. [Yes, I understand you.]

[Good.] Norberta looked at Annabelle. Dipped her head just so. [I think that's enough for today.]

[ _Why?_ ] Loapeoth followed Norberta's gaze very pointedly. Swept a foreleg in Annabelle's direction. [Oh, that's why: your human _handler_ is here for you. She's here, so you drop everything and go running to her. You leave _us_ , your own kind, your _students_ , because a human wants you to!]

[No, I'm ending class early because _you_ are pissing me off!] Norberta retorted, a growl entering her voice. [I let you into these lessons because you came to me and you told me you were interested in it all. And because you said you were scared, and you said you wanted a safe place to be, and to learn about the modern world and what your place might be in it. If you don't think I'm creating that kind of environment for you anymore, or giving you the information you need, then feel free to leave. I won't miss you.]

[So you'd abandon me? Just like that? Over the well-being of _humans?_ ]

[Okay, uhm, why don't you just-] Annabelle started. Stopped when that green snout whipped around, those eyes lasered into her.

[Loapeoth is my name, human! The name I had to choose for myself after _your kind_ sentenced mine to one thousand _years_ of...being nothing but some pathetic, scrabbling, _abused_ , locked up _animals!_ We dragons were strong, we were powerful, we were feared and we were prominent! We were everywhere, and we had magic and knowledge and we had _life!_ ] Loapeoth slammed her poison-tipped tail against the dirt, stamped a foreclaw and tossed her head while she yelled to the skies. She stomped forward, advancing on Annabelle. [What do we have now?! We have no knowledge, we have no magic, we have nothing to us! And it is because of _you! You did this to us! To our ancestors, to us, and to our children still! You did this to_ me! _And yet still to this day you lord over all of us, you get so much land, so many numbers, all those scattered cities and towns, and you claim yourselves to be the highest, greatest, best form of life on this planet! You do anything you want, to anyone you want, and it's just fine because it's you doing it! Humans!_ ]

Annabelle took a step back and held up her hands. Flesh and metal, palms outward. [Hey, okay - I understand your feelings, I can't- I can't imagine how...how upsetting all of this has to be, to learn about your history, and about the role that some of my people played in it, and...and what happened to you personally wasn't right, it wasn't okay, and I'm sorry...but I think you should listen to Norberta, all right? You just need to calm down here, and if you really want to get some kind of justice for your mistreatment, then I promise you I'll go to all the governments of the world and personally bring your case to their attention. I'll get it fast-tracked, I _promise_ -]

[ _HUMAN PROMISES MEAN NOTHING!_ ] Loapeoth opened her jaws wide and blasted out a stream of blue flames, swirling and spinning and spiraling and beautiful - and dangerous. Annabelle threw up a magic shield, braced against the fire; it wasn't enough, not without her wand in her hand. The barrier twisted and bubbled, bent inward, like huge fingers were being pressed into it. And then it broke, into fragments and particles of emerald that scattered to the wind. Before Annabelle was surrounded by the flames, before she could be lost in it all, something large moved between her and Loapeoth to block it. Norberta's great, leathery wing came down over her, swept her in toward her and then under her belly. Two foreclaws reached back down, under herself, and scooped Annabelle up and held her tight to cool scales.

Annabelle struggled to draw her wand admist roaring and thundering shakes, flames streaming this way and that. Movement and motion all around her.

Annabelle was pretty sure she threw up once or twice - probably on Norberta.

Norberta was lifting her wings to flap them, to go airborne, when Loapeoth darted forward and slammed into her flank with a shoulder. Norberta rolled with the impact, sprung herself up and lashed out with a foreclaw that tore into Loapeoth's face. She shoved and shoved, relentlessly pushing Loapeoth backwards. Then, Norberta swung her whole body around and her tail wrapped around Loapeoth's neck. Tightened and coiled several times over. Norberta flapped her wings, and with a great rush of magic she was soaring high above - and Loapeoth was being dragged along with her. Sheer force of gravity and acceleration tightened her tail around Loapeoth's throat like a noose for the hanging.

Loapeoth dangled, thrashing below with blind panic. She dug her claws into Norberta's tail and began ripping into her flesh with desperation, tearing and tearing as deep and fast as she could. Blood spilled down over her, muscle and tendons were shredded and hung loosely out of Norberta's torn open tail. Norberta twisted and shrieked in agony, let her tail uncoil and swiped down with both her foreclaws, tearing bloody gashes along Loapeoth's forehead and eyes - and dropping Annabelle from her grasp in the process (a situation Annabelle resolved by apparating down to the ground again). As Loapeoth spread her wings and gained her bearings, hovered in the air beneath Norberta, the latter opened her mouth and unleashed a stream of icy cold magic; Loapeoth's slitted eyes widened in total shock, but that was all she could do before she was enveloped in the magical ice. She became a big, frozen block; this block instantly started dropping like a stone.

Annabelle immediately aimed her wand skyward, catching Loapeoth in a levitation spell. She slowed her descent, set her down gently. She began casting all manner of binding spells about the ice block, preserving it as it was and further trapping Loapeoth within it.

Norberta landed heavily, cradling her mutilated tail against her flank, tucked under a wing. Heavy breaths and little noises escaped her mouth, high and drawn out.

Annabelle rushed forward and cast healing magic on her until she was satisfied. They breathed sighs of relief.

"What do we do with her now?" Norberta asked. She hesitated. "What do _you_ want to do with her now? She attacked you - do you want to get law enforcement on her? _Press charges_ , I think you call that whole process?"

"No," Annabelle shrugged. "I'm good, thanks. I don't want to...report this or anything. I don't want to ruin her life when she's just so- so hurt, and scared, and angry, and none of it's her fault. What do _you_ want to do with her? She's your student, your people."

Norberta shrugged her wings right back at Annabelle. "I don't know."

"Well, figure something out," Annabelle laughed. "You're going to have to deal with things like this all the time if you're really going to remake and _lead_ an entirely new dragon nation," she went on, smiling a little.

"I don't want to just throw her into prison - you're right about that. She'd never learn anything from humans. She needs to learn from me. Even if she doesn't want to right now," Norberta finished thoughtfully.

[We'll watch her for you.]

Annabelle and Norberta both turned to see a small, purple-scaled dragon slinking forward from the others ( _very_ small; he wasn't any bigger than an average human).

[Excuse you?] Norberta retorted. [ _You'll_ watch her? She's poison, she's damaged, and she gives a good thrashing - as you just saw! What do you think _you_ can do to help keep her in line, Spyrio?] She punctuated the little dragon's name with a snort.

[What you're teaching us,] the little purple, male dragon replied, determined and a little excited. [If you let us learn specific dragon spells sooner, we could use them to bind Loapeoth if she gets violent and angry again!]

[If she tries going after a human again, we can be there,] spoke up a large, blood red dragon with a sharp horn on her snout, and a triple bladed tail end like a typically-imagined devil's pitchfork. [We're supposed to be learning how to be good people. Morals, ethics, following laws - most of the time - and fitting in with the world. Let us prove that we can do that for you. For the restored dragon society - whenever that comes about.]

"So, how about that? You want to...bump your students up a level?" Annabelle smiled. "Put them through the express course?"

"I don't know." Norberta shook her head. She regarded her students a long moment. "What if I do, and then they go off with all this rare and old magic and they use it to hurt and kill, because my lessons didn't really sink in for them? Because they couldn't let go of _some feelings_ , like Loa?"

"If they do," Annabelle started carefully. "that isn't your fault. You're not responsible for how they choose to live their lives, or how they might choose to use what abilities or information they have. They're the only ones who can make the choice, in the end. If they do make the wrong one, then that's sad, and horrible, but it's on them - not you. And...if they do, you can track them down and kick their asses for it, right?"

"I suppose," Norberta huffed. She narrowed her eyes at her students. [Fine! I'll speed up your practical magic lessons. I'm glad to hear you talking like this. It's good,] she finished softly. Had she been human, she would have been smiling. [You're all good.]

Annabelle glanced at Loapeoth's ice block, and her mind dared to wonder a fleeting thought at the sight, no matter _what_ she'd said to reassure her dragon daughter: _How many of the students here are going to_ stay _good?_


	13. The Little Mermaid

_**April 2, 2005 - North Atlantic Ocean**_

Annabelle soared low over the ocean on her Stardust broomstick, doing occasional loops and swerves for amusement, but all the while making a speedy pace toward the straight beam of a rainbow shooting up out of the ocean to meet the clouds.

She reached her destination and hovered over the waves. She tapped her wand to herself, vanishing her clothes off her body and storing it all in the small bag hanging from a cloth band around her waist. She stowed her wand into the bag next. She flexed her fingers, and out of the bag came a little potions vial. She didn't hesitate to drink it. She vanished the empty vial away into her bag and gave her broom a tap of a finger. Then she just fell sideways off her boom and plunged into the ocean.

She swam up to break the surface a moment. She watched her broom disappear into thin air, and she smiled and sank back down below the waves as she felt the changes taking hold across her body. Assured that the broom was also stored in her bag now.

Freezing waters became warmer. Vision became clearer. She didn't need to hold her breath; she had gills on her neck. Her legs fused together and lengthened, becoming a long tail with fins. The culprit for all this was a very new, very powerful potion that utilized gillyweed, crushed magical fish scales, and some other ingredients to it that Annabelle wasn't really familiar with. Nonetheless, she was pleased that, in her line of work as Magical Britain's nonhuman diplomat, she got to be one of the first people to try the new transformative potion out.

Not that this was some diplomatic endeavor here. No, it was just that Annabelle had gotten an informal invitation to the mermaid kingdom of Creterul by its current ruling Queen, Lailu, which the Ministry of Magic had _taken to be_ a diplomatic action - and had therefore reacted accordingly to prepare Annabelle for it. The kingdom, and more specifically, its capital city of sorts: Mairai.

Mermaidian Annabelle practiced swimming circles, twisting and turning. It wasn't too different from flying around in the skies with Anju while using her enchanted wings. It was _better_ , even: she had buoyancy, here. There wasn't any risk of high speed free-falling if anything went wrong. Of course, there _was_ the risk of dying a terrible death of suffocation...but she didn't want to think about that too much. Besides, the potion would give her up to 24 hours worth of this transformation - it was specifically designed to be long term (something of an admittedly _recent_ concept in potions). And, if in some event it stopped working on her, she had two extra vials in her bag she could hopefully get to before drowning.

Annabelle kicked her tail and soared into an effortless, downward spiral. She rolled over and over as she did, then switched to rolling the other way for a while. She did a forward loop and went straight on down, picking up speed and slicing through the water like it was nothing. Deeper and deeper she went, and darker and darker her surroundings got - even with her changed vision. But she kept at it, kept going. Down, down, down, until she saw it.

The rainbow pillar that shimmered and glowed in this dark depth met with a series of scattered lights below her. Magical light sources. As she got closer to it all, those lights spread out and multiplied, and Annabelle really saw just how big of a place it was that she was bearing down on.

It was _definitely_ a _city._ But not like any city she'd ever seen before.

There was a dome, made of shell or something. Massive and wide. It spread out and covered an area of over fifty miles or so. All over the surface of this shell were those lights, in circles and in other patterns. They were circling, they were floating above these wide, circular holes in the shell, here and there - several dozen, all over. These lights pulsed between an eerie green, and a bright yellow. On the curved side of this shell dome, out of these openings were streams of mermaids, mermen, and close pods of what looked like sharks, dolphins, and a few octopuses and giant squids - Annabelle even watched a whale of some kind emerge and set out for the open seas.

The lights seemed to be like...like traffic lights, indicating go or stop.

Looking _through_ these openings, Annabelle gleaned glimpses of great rows and clusters of structures made of rock and shell, so far below, in all shapes and sizes, with lights lining them, ringing them, too, and there were carvings and statues about them, wooden poles and planks on roofs...and...

"You surfacers really do think too highly of yourselves, don't you?"

Annabelle whirled around, startling horribly.

A mermaid was floating there, had _snuck up on her in open water!_

"How did you do that?"

"Do what? Speak your language?" the mermaid's eyes (four times larger than a human's, and a lot rounder; they took up most of her face) jiggled around in their sockets in an odd way. Her lips curved into a smile. "I've known how to do that for a long time - it's necessary for dealing with your nosy surface nations."

"No, I mean- how did you just sneak up on me like that?"

"Your expression is, _you stick out like a sore thumb_ , I think," the mermaid replied, her smile turning into a full-teethed grin. "A child could've done it, Anne."

"It's Annabelle. And, how do you know my name, anyway?"

The mermaid _laughed_. She leaned back and crossed her arms. Twisted left and right, as if blown by current - or wind, maybe. "I wouldn't be much of a queen if I didn't know who I was inviting into my kingdom - and about the sort of things going on with you land-livers lately."

Annabelle stared. "Q-queen? What? You're- Lailu?"

"Yep."

"Uh-huh." Annabelle paused. "This isn't a prank or something?"

"A prank? Not yet." She laughed _again_. "Come on, follow me. We'll get you into my house. We can talk there."

Annabelle shrugged easily. "Okay..."

"I'm not one for going slow," the queen informed her, flashing another grin. "Can you keep up?"

"Probably not," Annabelle admitted. "I've only had _this_ for...maybe half an hour," she added, gesturing at her tail.

"Mmmm. Well, bad luck, Anne- abelle." That said, Lailu, _queen_ , took off toward the expansive dome shell like a bat out of hell.

Annabelle sputtered, floundered, and tore off after her with a madly swishing tail.

Lailu twirled and twisted, moving along on her backside to stare at Annabelle. She made a complex motion with her fingers where her fingertips flared up with individual, different colored magical lights, and then she flipped around, belly down again, and shot off even _faster_.

Annabelle kicked her tail harder to keep up. She followed Lailu through one of the great openings, and she really realized something new about the shell dome. It wasn't _just_ many dozens of miles _wide_ : it was also dozens upon dozens of miles _high_. Annabelle had thought the clusters of buildings were so small and grouped together because she'd been so far away, or because of the underwater weirdness of her vision, but no. No, big no! They were actually really, _really_ far below even the dome shell!

Now inside the dome herself, Annabelle saw there was a lot more to it. Not just the...clusters of buildings littering the rock bed far below. The whole of the dome's interior was littered with other structures that bobbed and floated about, almost haphazardly placed in relation to each other, and with no real regard to the elevation of them all. Most of these structures were orbiting each other, grouped together in twos and threes, sometimes fours and sixes that clung tight and rotated while they orbited other groups together. Larger and smaller swirled around each other, both vertically and horizontally. Like planets and stars did.

What was astonishingly meticulous about it was the fact that none of them were bumping into each other, knocking out orbits or anything. They seemed to all be perfectly timed so that none ever came close. Some had wider or tighter arcs, tilted orbits, and it all came together for an amazingly perfect routine. They were all moving in-between and through each other, around each other, and none of it was in any sort of chaos.

And what orbited these orbiting structures themselves were more of those magical, bright white lights!

It wasn't chaos. It was design, and it was breathtaking for Annabelle to witness.

Mermaids and mermen were darting between and around it all, through it all, like it was an everyday thing. There wasn't any panic, no desperate darting about the structures.

They all knew exactly how and when and where something was going to move.

Annabelle, on the other hand...

Lailu swam right up to her, swirled around her waist, tight like a constricting serpent, her body rubbing against Annabelle's, and popped up to give her a bop on the forehead with a glowing white palm.

Annabelle jerked back, staring. She slapped a hand to her head. "What was that for?" she asked, bewildered. Not hurt at all. Lailu made a general gesture around them. Annabelle obliged her, took another look around, and as she did she saw glowing, pulsing magical trails of white appearing all around herself. Trails, she realized instantly, that were quite obviously revealing the path and motion of each and every structure and cluster of structures around her. Every orbit, every direction was revealed to her.

"Can you see it?" Lailu spoke, quite seriously for the first time now.

"Yeah. Thanks for that, uh- that spell? Some kind of magic, duh, but...what is it?"

"Just something we slap over our kid's eyes until they're old enough to navigate themselves," Lailu responded, that sly smile of hers back again. "Figured you're enough _like_ a kid in my kingdom that you'd get some use out of it."

"Thanks," Annabelle repeated, trying not to _huff_ with the upsurge of exasperation and embarrassment filling her body just then.

"No pouting - this kingdom runs on happy thoughts. Come on now; we need to keep going. Just stay on my tail, won't you?"

Annabelle shook her head, smiling despite herself. "Okay. Lead the way." _Again._

Again they were off, fast and tight, weaving and diving together. Lailu, with utter confidence and a casual air about her, and Annabelle, with all the desperation of someone trying to control an _out of control_ vehicle in a bid to just keep it on the road, for god's sake.

After several minutes of this insanity, in which Annabelle still managed to bump into structures _and_ passersby (prompting her to make frantic and constant apologies), she really started to suspect that Lailu was leading her on a difficult route on purpose. She was diving, then taking her up again, then left, right, around in a circle and...

"Here we are," Lailu announced, drifting to a stop in front of a pair of two small houses that were in a mind-boggling, vertical _spiral_ path of motion - which took it up and down through another group of six larger structures with a standard horizontal orbit to them. "The small one on the left side is mine - don't let the door knock you on the tail."

"Could you just- uhm- take me in by hand, please?" Annabelle said weakly.

"Sure thing." Lailu grabbed Annabelle's flesh hand and eyed the spiraling houses. A second. Two- She surged forward, dragging Annabelle along, twisted them around a larger building and slipped into the properly faced, rotating doorway to her little home. Annabelle felt the tip of her tail touch the doorway as they entered.

Annabelle breathed - whatever - through her gills, leaning against the nearest wall of smooth, curved rock. Bad idea: she started rotating _with_ the structure. She quickly pulled her hand away and reoriented herself.

She turned to look out the entrance, and she saw the underwater world rotating from this new perspective. A narrow view. It almost made her sick, so she shut her eyes and turned to look at Lailu instead. The only constant in this place. There were two other side rooms in this house whose entryways kept moving around her that she couldn't bear to look at either!

"So...Queen Lailu-" Annabelle started.

Lailu held up a hand, and her index finger flared a bright red color. "Please, just Lailu! I know you surfacers love that respect in formality stuff, but down here we show respect by _familiarity._ When you're here, you're one of us. Family, whatever term you want to call it. We invite you in, we treat you good, and hopefully you'll want to come back."

"Alright, Lailu." Annabelle smiled, feeling her heart swell. "Uhm...so this is your home? It's...really small."

"Of course it is," Lailu said simply. She swished her tail and leaned forward, onto her stomach. A hand came up under her chin, while the other began to lazily swirl through the waters with fingertips that glowed white again. "How big is your home, Annabelle?"

"Sometimes really, really big - but most of the time it's pretty average for- uh, for people," Annabelle stammered out. "Depends if we have any large visitors."

"Right! Your dragon kid. Norberta. The one who swims above even the land itself! What's it like up there? I'd love to ask her."

"Um...it's cold. Blue. And...white. Cloudy."

"Blue." Lailu hummed. Her fingers shifted out of white, phased to a deepest blue. "My favorite color."

"The ocean is blue," Annabelle said stupidly.

"Yes, yes it is," said Lailu. Her eyes bobbed in their sockets again, in that strange way. "So, you're probably wondering why I invited you all the way out here to begin with, aren't you?"

Annabelle shifted in the water. She flexed her tail a bit under herself. "Uh, yeah. Definitely still wondering that."

"I invited you here to have some fun with me."

"Some fun?" Annabelle repeated. "Like, more of what we've already done? Racing and stuff?"

"You think _that_ was a race?" Lailu's eyes spazzed out, and she flipped over onto her backside and squirmed about like a worm on a hook. When she'd stopped, she flipped back upright and stared at Annabelle with those huge, unblinking eyes of hers. "You want to race me?" she asked, utterly serious again. For however long that'd last.

Annabelle shrugged. "Um...maybe? If you don't race for fun, what did you mean instead?" She was _so_ off balance it wasn't even funny. Literally, because...she didn't have land or _legs_ to stand on!

"Oh, we race," Lailu said airily. "But not _here._ Not like _that._ No, no. That's illegal, can cause chaos and injuries - we don't do that. If you want to race, we have a few courses built underneath Mairai, into the rocks. They go _all over the place_."

"That's...sensible," Annabelle replied. Inside, however, she was vowing to herself to _never_ allow herself to be inside a deep ocean, underground cavern or tunnel, because _that was too damn terrifying to even contemplate._

"It sure is." Lailu smiled, her huge eyes looked Annabelle up and down. Her blue fingertips pulsed brighter for a moment, shifted into a shade of orange, and then returned to its original, plain white state. Lailu closed her hand, and the lights blinked out entirely. "Do you want to?"

Annabelle tried to smile back. "Maybe later?"

"Ok. If you feel the urge, just let me know."

"Right. I- I will." Silence for a moment. "So...I'm really just here to...have fun with you?"

"Yes." Lailu's hand pulsed scarlet, held, and receded to nothing. "Okay, not really. I'd like to be able to convince you to keep coming back because I'd _like_ to develop certain relations with you surfacer nations. There are some big changes passing through your societies, and I want to get my hands into it before it's over. It could give my kingdom some new toys to play with. Some new options. Trading, aid, all that sort of stuff." Her lips pursed into a frown. "Some _other_ kingdoms around here have already been doing this, and it's affecting the rest of us in some bad ways."

"What kind of bad ways?" Annabelle asked.

Lailu leaned back in the waters, let out some bubbles from her mouth. She held up her hands and made a quick, two-second pattern, with lights of scarlet that flashed and intermingled as her fingers did. It was really almost like a kind of sign language. "Some of our people are being...kidnapped, and then they're being handed off to some of _your_ people. Like gifts. Trinkets. No...prizes. Some of your people are also being taken by some of our people, and none of it's nice to look at. I don't know who I have to make aware of the situation _up there_ to get this whole thing solved, but I need to do it somehow. I don't like it," she finished, simply but...emotionally.

"I didn't know anything like that was going on," Annabelle said quietly. "I'm sorry. I um- I'll try to...do what I can to help get it fixed. Get your people back here, and get mine back up there."

"Most of...neither of...they're not really alive anymore," Lailu blurted out. Her huge eyes were very still. Her palms glowed a dull purple, held outward to Annabelle. "When your people get brought down here, typically they die from it - if they don't, they get held and tortured, raped and killed. I think interrogated, too, maybe? I've heard things, that's all. And _my people_ have been dying slow, terrible deaths whenever your...fishermen snatch them up in those _nets_ and bring them onto your boats. They get other injuries too. And the ones who don't die get sent somewhere _else else_ , or they get pushed back down here for us to find a few days or weeks later. Bleeding, with broken bones, and - in the case of some of our men and most of our _women_ \- sexually based injuries."

"Okay. Okay, um...I am really, really sorry that this is happening."

"I can see that - even without any _ferai_ signals."

"Ferai signals?"

Lailu raised a palm at Annabelle again: it glowed a brilliant white. "This. Ferai signal."

"Even the ones on your fingers? Those are ferai signals, too?"

"No, those are _turai_ signals."

"What's the difference?" Annabelle asked, curious.

"Ferai are for conveying more intense, larger scale emotions and ideas. Turai are for minor feelings and ideas."

"And the different colors? Do they all mean something different?"

"They do." Lailu sounded as if she were trying very hard to be patient. Suddenly she whirled around and swished her tail, and began a fast circling of Annabelle. She was following the rotation of the house, keeping close to the walls. Almost skimming them. Keeping _pace with them,_ almost exactly. "Red is offense or embarrassment, or distress, generally. Blue is tranquil, or neutral, I suppose. Calm, at peace - contentment. Orange is attraction or arousal when directed at another through the fingers - turai. Purple is grief, or remorse, usually. Mourning, if you're mourning anyone. Green is annoyance or frustration. Yellow is a warning, a call for caution or care - it's complicated. And multicolor is joy or excitement."

"And white?" Annabelle asked, nodding.

"That just signifies a use of magic," Lailu laughed as she circled the room, her voice swirling about in a strange way with the motion. "Impending or current."

"Okay. Do you have any signals that use...like, pink, black, or...whatever? Turquoise, grass green, what about shades? One finger or multiple? What about flashes and bursts versus pulses and slow droning? Fading? And what do you do if you feel more than one thing at once? Do you just-"

Lailu interrupted her quickly. Gave her a strange look for a brief moment, when she passed in front of her. Annabelle had no clue what it was. "We don't want to get into shades or finger numbering, or flashes and pulses, and you generally _never_ want to see either pink or black, unless you're alone with someone you've known for a really long time. Don't mention shades, don't contest _fingers_ , and don't mention those two colored signals around anyone - they can be misinterpreted in a terrible way. And if you _see_ any pink or black lights like, around a house, don't go anywhere near it, for gosh sake."

"Alright. I'm- um, I'm sorry."

"I just didn't bring you here to teach you every aspect of my culture in a few hours," Lailu responded, dismissive and casual again. "Do you want to eat something?" she added spontaneously.

"What do you have to eat?" Annabelle asked cautiously.

"Wait a moment." Lailu circled the room twice more, then flashed out of the main room into one of the two side chambers.

"Green is annoyance?" Annabelle said suddenly, as a thought struck her.

"Right," Lailu's voice drifted back to her from the other room. "Why do you ask?"

"Your...dome's opening...hole thingy...signals turn green sometimes," Annabelle said, trailing into muttering.

"Right," Lailu said again. She laughed, loud and high. "That's just- oh, how do your people say it? How did that last surfacer put it...An _in joke?_ It's a culture thing, you wouldn't get it? Does that sound right?"

Annabelle smiled. "I guess." She paused as _another_ thought burst to life in her head. "And, hey - um, you used...orange fingers at me a minute ago, didn't you?"

"Yep," Lailu's voice replied, still in that casual tone of hers. "You make a good mermaid, in a weird way. Your eyes are all wrong, and your skin is just _weird weird_ , but the rest isn't too bad to look at. But that probably makes _me_ the weird one, doesn't it? Weird attractions."

"Um...I wouldn't- like- you know, kink-shame you or whatever..." Annabelle mumbled. "You like what you like, you know?"

"Oh, I know," came Lailu's reply, a humorous hint to her voice. "But not everyone thinks that way. A nearby society of lamia likes to intermingle with my kingdom's citizens, and vice versa, and it gets a lot of troublesome attention on both sides. I've been working with their ruler to stamp that out, but it's been slow going. Different histories and cultures are responsible for the difficulties, mostly - even though we do share one big thing in common that I think should really be enough to see us through the rest." She came back into the main room with a block of ice in her hands. This block of ice had a fish inside it. "Here, take it."

Annabelle took it. She was a little surprised to find it was both weightless _and_ lacked any sensation of freezing temperatures. "What do I do with it? Sorry, I've never...eaten anything underwater before. Or...fish, period. How do you- how do you prepare it, and all?"

"Is this a surfacer problem, or a you problem?" Lailu flashed a smile and took the fish back, slowly and deliberately. Her fingers ran over Annabelle's. "You always have those boats, and you're always taking and killing fish, whales, sharks, and sometimes octopuses - I thought you'd be an expert already."

"Not all of us are...fishermen," Annabelle stuttered, crossing her arms over her chest. "I've never actually been on a boat, or...gone fishing before. I- this is my- first time in the ocean, honestly."

"A day of firsts for you, then." Lailu's palm lit up white, and she ran it over the side of the ice. It disappeared in underwater steam. She stroked the fish, and the scales popped off rapidly. Then, the fish itself was split open, and its insides were gushing outside. Lailu flicked her lit-up fingers at the guts, and they vanished into thin air. "You have to be pretty brave, don't you? To come here like this, into a twofold unknown world. Just because I invited you here."

"I- I like to think I'm brave, yeah," Annabelle said, distractedly eyeing the fish that was being prepared. "Not to be egotistical, or arrogant, you know - just, I hear that from people a lot."

"Right." Lailu nodded; she closed her fist above the fish, and it was suddenly enveloped in magical, waterproof fires. "That's something I hear, myself. And _stupid_ : mainly for looking to reach out to you surfacers for any kind of help."

"Sorry."

"Public opinions ebb and flow," Lailu dismissed. "It will all come back my way soon enough - once we're past this situation."

"I hope so."

"Thanks. What's in the bag?"

Annabelle sniffed at the cooking fish, glanced down at her bag. "Um, my wand, some potions, my clothes and my broomstick - not much."

"I don't really know what all that is," Lailu admitted, still not looking away from the fish she was intently staring at. "Could I see some of it?"

"Erm, if you want to, sure," Annabelle reluctantly answered. "None of it does well in water. They...can get damaged, and- other stuff. But if it's just for a short minute or two, I think it could all be fine."

"Really? Oh, well: here." Lailu lifted a hand of glowing white, directed off to her side.

A bubble began to grow in the room. Small at first, then larger, larger, larger...

"Is that big enough for your stuff?" Lailu asked.

"Yeah. Thank you."

Lailu smiled, lowered her hand. "You're welcome."

Annabelle untied her bag and reached her arms into the large bubble. She found dry air and room temperature inside it. She retrieved her things and spread them out for Lailu, hovering inside the bubble together.

Lailu extinguished her flames and pushed the fish aside; it floated off a few feet, and then just bobbed in place in defiance of normal water physics. Lailu's huge eyes were now peering into the bubble. She tentatively reached her hands in to touch, stroke and feel Annabelle's affects.

"You really wrap all of this around your body? How do you even move with all of that? Isn't it really restrictive?"

"Um, well, on the surface we don't exactly have to be as agile or...as fast as you do down here. So it's not really a problem for us. And if we do have to be fast, we have things like this broomstick to help us go faster magically. Or, technologically, we have cars and stuff."

"You have to rely on other things all the time to just move around?" Lailu's fingers flared bright red. Not deep scarlet, like before. And it was only for a moment, a second, before dying down. She made a quick, intricate motion with them in that second that Annabelle couldn't guess at.

But she could ask. "That was bright red. Not dark. And the...hand sign? What was that about?"

"Pity. Sympathy," Lailu responded, hesitant for once.

"Oh. No, it's- it isn't that bad!" Annabelle laughed. "Clothing, I mean. It's not like we're all cripples or something," she hurried to explain.

Lailu's index finger flashed bright red, singularly. "Right - sorry. I didn't mean to imply that about you."

"It's okay. Um, Lailu, not to get into culture and history lessons again, but...why exactly do you have the...uhm...ferai and turai signals, and the hand motions, too? Why do you have all that when you're talking to me just fine with your mouth? You know, a voice and all? A language."

"We didn't _used_ to be able to talk with our voices," Lailu said simply. "In our ancient past, our species...my subspecies, actually, in particular, developed this system. Ferai and turai signalling, that is. Everyone else generally used various hand signals, too. But we're special, because we started to use our magic to communicate more - more complex things. We brought nuance to social interactions. We advanced social interactions, with ourselves and with other societies who met us. Other kingdoms in the modern age use...bastardized ferai and turai signalling, because of their old encounters with us - they took it home and twisted it up into their own versions of it. Between all of us modern types, over time, we managed to find words in common there and force a bridge to be made between our separate versions of the signalling."

"Cool."

Lailu grinned. "Yes. Cool." She flicked a finger at the fish, and it split into two whole fish like a dividing cell; one of them zoomed over to float in front of Annabelle, while the other went straight to Lailu's waiting palm. She took a big bite out of it, then flipped onto her backside and leaned into the wall, letting it take her around and around again.

Annabelle lowered herself awkwardly onto her...nonexistent knees? In the middle of the room. She bit into the fish. It was wet, chewy, and...well, it was food. She glanced at Lailu as she made another round in front of Annabelle's field of view, and took another bite out of it. Chewed, swallowed it up. "Thank you for the meal," she spoke, mentally crossing her fingers (and feeling a bit terrible about it).

When Lailu came around again, she had a smile on her face. Her huge eyes were shining. Literally. They were a radiant, light shade of _pink_. "Of course!"

 _Forbidden color number one,_ Annabelle thought. What _was_ that color about, and why was Lailu shining it off with her eyes now?

Annabelle wasn't going to ask this time. It probably wouldn't be socially acceptable to push on that front.

* * *

Annabelle let Lailu lead her around Mairai for the whole day.

They never went down to the rocky, sandy bottom, though. The floor of the ocean. Or, this...ocean shelf, or...whatever. Annabelle really didn't know much about aquamarine-ology or whatever it was! She thought she should probably change that, though, if she was going to be coming back here on any sort of regular basis in future. Or even semi-regular. She thought that she'd love to.

Unfortunately, it was as Annabelle was looking down on these "streets" that she put her nonexistent foot in her mouth for the first time. Really, really badly.

"So is this like a class thing? A social divide? Is it poor merpeople on the bottom, rich ones up there?" she had blurted out in wonder, looking all around herself. "I mean, I never see anyone down there. Does anybody live there, or did they used to?"

Lailu had stopped dead. Her whole body had flared a bloody red. " _No._ " That was all she had said, with her back kept to Annabelle.

Annabelle never asked about the buildings and houses on the floor again. And she never even _thought_ about asking to actually go down there. And she apologized several times over to Lailu - who accepted them from her after the fourth time, a sigh of bubbles out her lips and a bright flareup of dark purple lights in her hands.

After that, Lailu quickly returned to her usual, excitable, welcoming self. She took her around to meet several other merpeople who could also speak english (not something they'd learned voluntarily, like Lailu had: it came from time spent in human captivity), and they stayed with them in their homes for a good few hours each. Then, Lailu also swayed her into visiting a sort of amphitheater where they spent an hour or so watching coordinated dancing routines (err, swim routines) from a group of competitive dancers at practice.

Annabelle was impressed with them, for sure, even knowing nothing about the style or whatever else. The way they moved, weaved and swiveled, how they used magic to induce colorful pulses and swirls...she'd loved every second of it. Lailu had seemed to love that she'd loved it, and she'd taken great delight in explaining every move and motion in greatest details to her. Something Annabelle had been appreciative of.

And after that...

Annabelle held onto Lailu's hips - or, where her hips would've been, had she been more obviously humanoid than she was - and she danced with her. Lailu placed hands on Annabelle's shoulders, and she guided her about the area. Took her into a slow, gentle upward spiral along the cliffside, until they reached the next shelf. Lailu simply rotated with her, drifting them off to one side, then the other. She helped Annabelle to figure out how to dance while horizontal, and they went around in a circle a few times together, came out of it and did some loops, too. But it was all so slow, so careful. Lailu, she knew Annabelle's discomfort, her unfamiliarity with this way of _being_ , and so she kept it as simple as she could, while still taking her through her own culture's dance moves.

For that, god, Annabelle loved her for it. So much. She couldn't stop smiling, she couldn't help from resting her head on Lailu's shoulder, and she couldn't help the hand that shifted up from waistline to the back of Lailu's bald head, where she caressed and stroked, held and held (and likewise, Lailu found great interest in Annabelle's hair, short as it was; she felt it, threaded it, tugged on it a bit, and even sniffed at it once or twice). And when she drew back again, she looked into those huge eyes, as they shifted all sorts of colors, flared and faded, one after another, and then how they'd go multicolor, and then those rainbow eyes filled the entire body, and Lailu was a living rainbow as her hands experimentally roamed and touched at Annabelle's breasts - something Lailu had absolutely zero knowledge about or experience with. Female mermaids of her particular subspecies, of course, had no breasts, because they had no _need_ for breasts. No need for milk, specifically, as Annabelle learned while they casually, quietly discussed differences in biology right there in the midst of their half-dance, half-bodily-explorations together.

Annabelle giggled a few times, when Lailu's pressing, stroking fingers found her more tickly spots on the tops of her breasts. Lailu did it a few more times after that, after she'd been assured it wasn't a painful thing (she'd been worried, at first, at the reaction).

Lailu broke their dance up and settled herself at the edge of the cliff, overlooking Mairai. Still nowhere near close to the ceiling of the dome shell, though. They were off to one side, sure, but...not at all near the curved edge of it. That was a ways back and further _up_ , hard to believe as it was.

Mairai was just so, so large it was incredible. And with all those lights...

Annabelle snuggled up to Lailu, both of them laid out on their sides on the rocky cliff.

Lailu had finally wound herself down, and now she was sort of sleeping. Well...well on her way to it, she'd explained. She didn't have eyelids, but she still slept, in her species' way. It wasn't like human sleep - something she'd been almost _horrified_ by when Annabelle had explained it to her, for her part of the discussion. Lailu's sleep was, well, like a fish's. Eyes open, a part of her brain active to receive visual stimulation and movement, but...the rest of her slowed and relaxed. But, still, she never did go full unconscious, like a human would. It was actually more like...deep resting, as opposed to full sleep. And she could do it at any time she wanted, there wasn't a strict sleep schedule like a human had.

Anyway, Lailu was in this state in a matter of minutes, and Annabelle let her be. Lailu had her arms around her, was pressing against her from behind. Her tail was curled lazily around the base of Annabelle's own. Annabelle looked out across Mairai, watching all the orbiting homes and all the moving merpeople and sea inhabitants. All those lights and colors...

Annabelle had choked up more than once today. And now, here, with Lailu...well, she let herself get a bit more than that. Tears emerged out of her eyes, and floated off away from her.

An hour or so later, Lailu woke up. Her long tail unwound from Annabelle's. Her arms let her chest go. She flicked her tail and twisted upright, gazed down at Annabelle with a smile. "Hi."

"Hi," Annabelle said back, flashing a smile of her own. She sat up, too. She roamed her gaze over Mairai for the millionth time, and her eyes dropped down again. Down, down. Passing thought. Lailu picked up on it.

"I...am sorry for my reaction earlier," Lailu whispered. Her huge eyes were downcast, as well. Fixated on the sea floor. "The bottom...it's a very sensitive topic for me - for anyone living here. It's historical, and it's personal."

"I'm sorry for even asking."

"I don't want to have to talk about it...but I _do_ have to talk about it if you're going to help me the way I want you to help me. I need you to understand what you're getting into with me. With this kingdom, and with the others."

"If you want to tell me, I'd be...honored to hear it."

"There's nothing honorable about it." Lailu pursed her lips, and out streamed little bubbles. She dipped her head, and her hands in her "lap" glowed scarlet. Not dark, but not light. The scarlet shifted into deep purple, then back to scarlet again. Her index finger snaked between her other hand's pinky and ring finger, grappled with her thumb in a strange dance, and skated across her palm with the viciousness of a knife stroke. "About thirty years ago, my kingdom was different. It wasn't _my_ kingdom: it was my mother's. And we didn't have the dome around it, or all these drifter homes. It was open water, and just the floor. And this cliff here...it used to have a castle on top of it. A palace. For a long time, we had been having some troubles with another kingdom. A large one. A one with a very different view of the world, and a different view on how certain people should be treated. This kingdom sent its soldiers to ours sometimes. To attack, kidnap, kill. Push and prod, each time. Then, they made their move. A big move. There were thousands of them, all coming here. They took over Mairai, and forced most everyone to flee. But the people who were left, the ones who were caught, they were...rounded up, put into their own homes, one at a time, alone, one after another, and they were brutalized. Burned. Stabbed. Violated. Magic was used, too, for the worst things imaginable. And magical plants, and creatures. Toxins. It was all used on them. I'm talking everyone: adults, kids, and even infants."

"Magic plant toxins would make people's skin peel off, or their scales melt away. They'd take whole batches of developing eggs and feed them to magic sea serpents, right in front of the parents. Or eat them, themselves, and laugh." Lailu sent out another bubble stream. Her tail slapped the cliff. "My mother, queen at the time, was one of those people who got caught. But she was _special_ , being the queen. She was held away from everyone else, and she had to watch it all happen - over the course of _weeks_ , from right up here where we are now. From the entrance to her own palace, overlooking her city. She had her own troubles to deal with, too, though, so she wasn't left out on that front, was she? At the time, I was a year old. I had _my own troubles_ during that time, too."

"But I got away from it," Lailu went on, her body flaring with brilliance of purple and swirls of scarlet. Touches of greens and yellows, too, blotches and tendrils among the rest. "A lot of the people who escaped the invasion came back, with the forces of a few neighboring kingdoms on their side. That lamia society I mentioned I've been trying to foster relations with? They were the largest, most prominent nation that came to our rescue at that time. They saved me, personally. Took me out of the wreckage of the palace, right after it was brought down on me and my mother as a final act of spite by the invaders who saw they were going to lose this city to our reinforcements."

Lailu pressed herself to Annabelle, and arms and tail wrapped around her body. There was a silence, for a long minute. Then her voice started again. "They protected not just me, but all the others of us who survived the occupation, for years afterward. They deterred the other kingdom, and they guarded us here. They helped us rebuild, and they contributed to this dome we have now. And still to this day they've been putting their soldiers between us and that kingdom, between our borders on patrol. They're still looking out for us." She paused. "Anyway, this is all why nobody ever lives down there anymore. And it's why we built our race tracks _underneath_ it - it's a way of bringing remembrance through joy, with joy, to the souls of the dead who sank down there during those weeks. Their bodies hit the floor, but their souls kept going further down. So, we had to dig down to reach those souls again. To spend time with them again. We want to spend time with the _souls_ , though, not with the bodies."

Annabelle turned around in Lailu's arms, her tail, and she held her tight and close. It was a while before she spoke. When she did, she asked a question. "Lailu? Is this...this kingdom that's the one...doing the kidnappings and things these days? Of your people and mine? Is it the same one?"

"Mostly, yes. They've gotten support from some smaller nations, though, too - somehow. I hate them, I hate this. I hate all of this. I want it to end already. Why can't we just be safe again?"

"I don't know." Annabelle stroked the back of Lailu's head. "But I'm- I'm going to say and do whatever I can to help you with this stuff. Okay? Even if it means...if it means just...doing some things that maybe other people wouldn't approve of," she finished softly. "I promise, we're going to get this sorted out. Your people are going to be safe again, and mine will be too. And this kingdom...we'll make them stop."

"You really are a kid," Lailu said quietly. "You think you can _just stop_ an entire kingdom and its army from being aggressive toward others? Just like that?"

"Maybe not?" Annabelle conceded, shrugging against Lailu. "But um...that's why I'm here, regardless, right? You want help, support, from surfacer nations. I'll get you that, at least, yeah? However I have to. I'll get it for you. You'll have more allies than you can count, and they'll all help with this. Make it stop."

"That's the hope. I've heard about the things you've done on the surface. Miracles, friendships and alliances, going against every odd and every _law_ in your surface world for the sake of helping people. I'd hoped you'd come help me that same way, too, with my invitation."

"I will," Annabelle promised. "I will."


End file.
